Holocaust Survivor Who Fought Off Mugger Says ‘Ill’ Attacker Needs Treatment — Not Jail
Image by Screenshot From New York Post Video, via JTA
(JTA) — A 91-year-old Holocaust survivor who fought off a purse snatcher said the alleged attacker arrested this week should not go to jail if she is mentally ill.
Gina Zuckerman, a Holocaust survivor from Poland, was 90 when she was jumped by a purse snatcher in September near New York’s Washington Square Park. The assailant tried to convince passers-by that she was Zuckerman’s health care aide. The nonagenarian was eventually thrown to the ground, but escaped from the attack with her purse, which contained about $10.
Lillian Maduro, 49, was arrested on Monday as the alleged attacker. She was ordered held on $50,000 bond or $25,000 cash bail.
“I am not vengeful, I just think this is a terrible thing for her to do,” Zuckerman told the New York Daily News. “I’ve been thinking about the lady, and I think she should go to a mental hospital. I don’t think she should go to a jail.”
Zuckerman, who required five stitches in her arm after the attack, spent six years in a German labor camp after the Nazis invaded her home country in 1939.
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
