Tragic Brooklyn Fire Mom Leaves Hospital

A woman lights a candle at the scene of a fire that killed seven Jewish children in Brooklyn. Image by Getty Images

By JTA June 29, 2015

The mother of seven children who died in a March fire in their Brooklyn home was released from the hospital.

Gayle Sassoon left the hospital on Friday and will continue to recover at the Brooklyn home of her mother-in-law, her husband, Gabriel, told the Kol Barama radio station on Sunday during an eight-minute interview.

Sassoon will continue to receive rehabilitation treatment on an outpatient basis, including to improve her walking and the use of her hands, Gabriel Sassoon said, calling his wife “very strong” and saying she possesses “a lot of faith.”

“We are able to cry about them [the children] with love and then be happy instead of crying about them and missing them and being depressed,” Gabriel Sassoon said. “So, I and my wife are trying to make our missing them for something better, to remember the love and the joy that we have. Through this, it’s possible to change the situation from something negative to something positive.”

The couple’s surviving daughter, Tzipporah, 15, came home from the hospital in April.

Gabriel Sassoon was out of town at a religious conference when the fire consumed the family’s home in the New York City borough shortly after midnight on March 22, a Saturday. Officials have blamed an unattended hot plate warming Shabbat meals as the cause.

Gayle Sassoon and Tziporah escaped by leaping from the second floor of the house. The seven children, who ranged in age from 5 to 16, were buried in Jerusalem.

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