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Diamantaires spared in Mumbai terror attacks

By Michelle Graff
December 01, 2008

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Mumbai, India--Diamantaires who gathered in Mumbai for a Diamond Trading Co. (DTC) meeting last week have all been accounted for in the wake of terror attacks in India's jewelry manufacturing hub, the DTC reported Monday.

In an e-mail to National Jeweler, DTC spokeswoman Louise Prior confirmed that all attendees--among them DTC Managing Director Varda Shine--are safe.

She declined to provide further details, though news reports claim that diamantaires were gathered at the Taj Mahal Hotel, an upscale South Mumbai venue popular with Westerners and located at the Gateway of India, which was one of the hotels at the center of the attack.

"At this stage, all I would like to say is that a delegation from the DTC, led by Varda Shine from DTC, was in Mumbai at the time that these awful events were unfolding. They are luckily all safely accounted for," Prior said. "Our thoughts are with the families and friends of all who have been affected by this tragedy."

Terror broke out in India's financial capital last Wednesday, when a group of gunmen went on a 60-hour shooting rampage at various locations around the city, including the upscale Taj hotel and the neighboring Oberoi hotel, as well as the Chabad House, a Jewish center.
 
As of Monday, the attack had left at least 174 dead, including six Americans, Germans, Canadians and Israelis, according to The Associated Press (AP).

Among those killed in last week's bloody terror attacks was Rabbi Gabi Holtzberg and his wife, Rivki, both of Brooklyn, N.Y. The Hotlzbergs ran the Chabad House, a Jewish center considered a "home away from home" for Israeli diamantaires in Mumbai on business.

Martin Rapaport, a longtime player in the diamond industry and chairman of the Rapaport Group, told National Jeweler on Monday that he knew Gabi Holtzberg "very well," and that Rapaport Group planned to issue a statement on the attack. That statement had not been received as of press time.

As Indian authorities continue to unravel the horrific events of last week, diamond industry players around the globe expressed their sympathies for those lost in the attacks.

Posted outside the Israeli Diamond Exchange in Ramat Gan, Israel, on Monday was a "particularly poignant" obituary, mourning the death of the Hotlzbergs, according to the Israel Diamond Industry portal site.

The site quotes Rabbi Hagai Halevi, who described how the Hotlzbergs provided kosher dinner for visiting Israelis every night and even would prepare kosher sandwiches and deliver them to Israeli diamantaires wherever they were working.

"The diamantaires called them 'the angels,'" Halevi said. "Gabi would receive each guest--and particularly the Israeli diamantaires who visited the center regularly--with a warm hug and contagious enthusiasm as it if had been years since they had seen each other rather than a few weeks."

In the United States, the Diamond Manufacturers and Importers Association (DMIA) released a statement expressing "collective horror and dismay" at the attacks.

"We take comfort in the belief that our colleagues in the diamond industry have had the good fortune of escaping harm," the statement read. "The DMIA extends our deepest sympathies and condolences to the families of the innocent victims who have lost their lives, and condemns all acts of terrorism which violate the foundation of humanity."

Neel Madhavani, of New York-based diamond manufacturing and liquidation firm SimplexDiam, who has friends and family as well as business operations in India, called the carnage "sickening" but said those in India are looking toward the future.

"Everyone in India I speak with talks about tomorrow, and we find from years of attacks that although we need to work as a community and a society to transform the response to these attacks, going back to life as usual is the best way to fight agents of terror," he said. "When the Oberoi and the Taj re-open I will spend more time there than before. I hope and expect that my friends and colleagues will do the same. Safe or unsafe, it's what we did in New York after 9/11 and what we'll do in Mumbai."
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