Mumbai, India – Friend of Rabbi Holtzberg Recounts Night of Horror at Oberoi Hotel

Mumbai, India – Marc Schwalb was talking to a colleague outside his room on the 19th floor of the Oberoi Hotel when he heard the unmistakable sound of gunfire. In a matter of seconds, he and his colleague, both from W. Nagel International Diamond Brokers, could see the chaos unfolding below them in the open atrium of the Oberoi.

“We just saw two guys shooting at everything that was moving,” he said of the ordeal which began by his account at around 10:30 p.m. last Wednesday. They were firing in the lobby and then they went into the restaurant and grabbed hostages.”

Schwalb and his colleague quickly retreated into his room. His plans to return to his home in Antwerp that night would have to wait.
Instead, he and his colleague turned on the television and within minutes they learned the news of the coordinated terrorist attacks across the financial district of Mumbai.

Most disturbing for Schwalb was the news that the Chabad Jewish Center had come under attack. Schwalb, a religiously observant Jew, was not only quite friendly with the Rabbi of the Jewish Center, but he had also visited the house the previous night to eat dinner. (It was later learned that Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg along with his wife Rivka and four other victims had been killed during the attack).

Fearing that the terrorists were specifically targeting Jews, Schwalb took his prayer shawl and phylacteries (Tallit&Tfillen)—both symbol of Jewish prayer—and hid them within his hotel room in the event that the terrorists would overrun the room.

His night was far from over. With the help of his wife back in Antwerp, Schwalb was able to establish regular contact on his cell phone with the Belgian consulate as well as speak to Indian friends watching events from outside the hotel. This contact proved particularly lifesaving when a fire broke out in the hotel around midnight.

“We were suffocating from the terrible smoke in our rooms and that moment I was scared to death as I remembered scenes from 9/11,” he said. He broke the windows in the room to get fresh air and learned that the fire was subsiding from his Indian friend watching outside.

Just three hours later, Schwalb’s worst fears were realized when he heard gunfire on his floor and the screams and cries of women. His room was miraculously untouched.

At 11:00 a.m., the television from which he had been watching the latest news went dead in anticipation of a raid by India’s anti-terrorist unit.

“We knew that the army had taken over and was going to try and storm the hotel,” he said.
It would still be hours until Schwalb heard pounding on his door demanding that he open up. “I was pretty scared to open the door,” he recounted. “I looked through the peep hole and tried to identify the persons with the guns and helmets as police. I really had no choice but to open the door.”

Schwalb was finally rescued Thursday at 3:30 p.m.—seventeen hours after he had heard the first gunshots. As the commandos led him from his room, he saw the bodies of the three women whose screams he had heard the night before.

He left with only his passport and his prayer items which he had reclaimed from their hiding spot.

By Friday morning he was back in Antwerp.
“I was just in time to attend the two minutes of silence organized by the Antwerp diamond trade,” he said.