India's Modi meets Israeli boy orphaned in 2008 Mumbai massacre

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met on Wednesday with a young Israeli boy who survived a November 2008 terrorist attack on a Mumbai Jewish center that killed both his parents and seven other people.

Moshe Holtzberg was only two years old when he was taken hostage along with his parents and several other tourists at Mumbai's Chabad House by terrorists affiliated with a Pakistani Islamist group.

Holtzberg's parents, Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg, were directors of the Jewish center. They were killed in the attack, along with seven others, but Holtzberg survived after being rescued by his nanny, Sandra Samuel, who fled the building with him.

Holtzberg told Modi that he misses India very much, to which Modi replied that the country would always be open to him.

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Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu invited Holtzberg to accompany him on his future trip to India.

Now ten years old, Holtzberg lives in the northern Israeli village of Afula with his grandparents and former nanny Sandra, who came with him to Israel.

Speaking to i24NEWS after the ceremony, Sandra says that Moshe was "overjoyed" to meet the Indian Prime Minister.

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"It was very very exciting. And for me...it was a big honor," she said. "[Moshe] told me: 'See Sandra! I'm going to tell in my school all my friends that the [Indian] Prime Minister hugged me!'"

Nine years after the tragedy in Mumbai, Sandra says Moshe is just like every other kid his age.

"He is a normal kid. His school, his every day life is excellent, he's in good health, everything is good [thanks to God]," she says.

But up until now, Sandra has not discussed with Moshe his parents or the night of the attack explaining that she has respected that he has not asked.

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"He knows because people talk. As for asking, I don't know why, maybe he's too young now to ask about it, but he's not asked," she says, "But this much he knows: That he has a Chabad in Bombay [Mumbai], and that it is Aba's [father's] Chabad, and when he becomes big he will go there."

As for Sandra, she says that night is burned into her memory.

"It's like a picture in my mind. As long as I'm on this earth I think it will be on my mind," she says. "He was asleep on the fifth floor and I knew that any moment this baby is going to cry. And I have to be there. So I was there. And thank God that I was there. I think God kept me there to save him."

"I took him into the main street...through the main door. I don't know where the gunmen were. I just heard him cry out my name and I ran," she recalls.

The Chabad House was one of several targets attacked by the militants. Two luxury hotels and a train station in the city were also targeted.

A number of attacks throughout the city between November 26 to November 29, 2008 claimed over 160 lives and brought India to the brink of war with Pakistan.

Jordana Miller contributed to this report.