Jewish Brooklyn family to be buried in Israel; as NY mayor mourns 'unbelievable tragedy'
'Every New Yorker is feeling this pain right now,' says Mayor Bill de Blasio after Brooklyn fire kills 7 children of the Orthodox Jewish Sassoon family; Mother Gayle and her teenage daughter Sipora remain in critical condition - the only ones to survive the fire.
The 7 Jewish children killed by a deadly fire that left only two survivors in New York will be buried in Israel, a family acquaintance said late Saturday, as New York mourned what its mayor called an "unbelievable tragedy."
A family acquaintance of the Sassoon family in Brooklyn, said it is likely they will be buried in Israel. The acquaintance said the Sassoon father was still in shock and that the entire community had still not registered the shocking event. He added that Gayle Sassoon, the mother, and her daughter Sipora, both still critically wounded, do not know of the deaths of their other family members as they are sedated and intubated.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio visited the family's home Saturday, and said "It's so painful, it's so difficult…Every New Yorker is feeling this pain right now," said De Blasio in an interview with CNN.
The victims of the catastrophic fire were the Sassoon girls Elaine, 16, Rivkah, 11, and Sara, 6, and boys David, 12, Yeshua, 10, Moshe, 8, and Yaakob, 5.
Gayle Sassoon, their mother, and her eldest daughter Sipora, 16, jumped from a second story window and survived the fire, although they are in critical condition – suffering from smoke inhalation and severe burns.
Gayle Sassoon was taken to Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx, which has a hyperbaric oxygen chamber for burn victims, and Siporah was taken to Staten Island University Hospital North, according to The New York Times.
The father, who remains unidentified, was not at home during the time of the fire as he had attended a religious conference over the Sabbath. He was only notified of the tragic accident hours after it played out due to the Jewish prohibition of using electronic devices on the Sabbath.
The entire city was left devastated due to the terrible tragedy – named the worst fire in the city in 7 years.
The cause of the fire is believed to be a hot plate which malfunctioned and ignited. It is common for those who observe the Sabbath religiously to use hot plates to keep food warm during the Sabbath as they do not use electricity during the holy day of rest.
The fire, which started in the kitchen shortly after midnight, quickly spread to the second floor where the young children - four boys and three girls - were sleeping in five bedrooms at the rear of the house, local authorities said.
According to a report by the New York Times, a neighbor of the Sassoon's said that Gayle Sassoon had grown up in Midwood as a moderately religious girl and married her childhood sweetheart, from whom she got divorced before having any children.
Gayle later became more religious and moved to Israel where she met her current husband, with whom she had eight children. The family moved to Brooklyn from Israel about two years ago in order to be close to a large extended family, according to the report by the New York Times.
According to the report, neighbors described the Sassoon children as "little angles" who were well behaved.
