Holocaust survivor among eight victims of Colorado terror attack as friends reveal how peaceful weekly pro-Israel event turned to horror

Daily Mail​

02-06-2025

A Holocaust survivor and a college professor were among those injured when a terrorist launched makeshift flamethrowers at a peaceful pro-Israel rally on Sunday, according to witnesses.
Police said Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, injured eight people - setting at least one ablaze - at a demonstration honoring the October 7 victims who are still being held hostage by Hamas militants in Gaza.
The horror unfolded during an event organized by Jewish group Run For Their Lives on Pearl Street Mall in the city's downtown just before 1.30pm local time on Sunday.
Boulder Police have not publicly identified the victims of the hate crime, but described them as four women and four men ranging in age from 52 to 88.
Longtime Boulder residents Rabbi Israel Wilhelm and filmmaker Lisa Effress said the oldest victim of Sunday's attack lived through the horrors of the Holocaust.
Wilhelm told CBS Colorado the 88-year-old female victim was a refugee who fled Europe during Adolf Hitler's purge. He described her as a 'very loving person'.
Effress, 55, said she is friends with the same victim, adding that she witnessed medics loading her into an ambulance at the scene on Sunday afternoon.
'It was horrible,' she told the New York Times.
Wilhelm, who is the Chabad director at the University of Colorado Boulder, added that another victim is a professor at the college.
Effress, who has lived in the ordinarily peaceful Colorado mountain town for 17 years, said the demonstration Soliman targeted has been taking place every Sunday since a few weeks after the October 7, 2023 terror attack in Israel.
A group of varying size - usually around 20 to 100 people - gathers at Pearl Street Mall in the city's downtown each week to draw attention to the 58 Israeli hostages who are still being held by Hamas militants in Gaza.
Effress usually takes part but did not this Sunday. She was across the street having lunch with her daughter, and as soon as she heard police and ambulance sirens on the mall she knew what had happened.
'I knew immediately - I just knew,' she said. 'I ran across the street, looking for everyone.'
Ed Victor, who was part of the pro-Israel walk on Sunday, said the group sometimes encounters hecklers, but he was not prepared for a vicious Molotov cocktail attack.
'We stood up, lined up in front of the old Boulder courthouse, and I was actually on the far west side,' he told CBS Colorado as he recalled the horrific incident.
'There was somebody there that I didn't even notice, although he was making a lot of noise, but I'm just focused on my job of being quiet and getting lined up.
'And, from my point of view, all of a sudden, I felt the heat. It was a Molotov cocktail equivalent, a gas bomb in a glass jar, thrown.
'Av [another marcher] saw it, a big flame as high as a tree, and all I saw was someone on fire.'
Victor said one member of the group with medical experience stepped in to take care of the woman on fire, while he comforted her husband.
He said several people nearby also rushed in to help, with many bringing water from nearby restaurants and houses.
They included bystander Brian H, who did not want to give his last name. He witnessed the horror while he was dining outside nearby with his family.
Brian told CNN he saw a man launching 'Molotov cocktails' at the demonstration.
He said another man was trying to talk the suspect down, but the suspect yelled at them: 'F**k you, Zionist,' 'You all deserve to die,' and 'You've killed these children.'
'He was very erratic, shouting and spewing terrible things at different people,' Brian said.
Brian said he saw an elderly woman lying unresponsive on the ground. 'There were several people attending to her and wrapping her up, trying to ensure she was ok,' he told CNN.
He added that he brought a large bucket from the restaurant and filled it with water from a fountain in the courtyard, before pouring it on the burn victims.
Victor said there were around 30 people at the demonstration on Sunday walking their usual route while singing the Israeli national anthem, telling stories and recounting the names of the hostages.
Street performer Peter Irish described witnessing the horrors of the attack as 'traumatic'.
'I saw the aftermath,' he told CBS Colorado. 'It was like minutes after.
'I came out, it was chaos, people were writhing on the ground. It was traumatic to watch, to be honest with you. It was chaos.'
FBI Director Kash Patel called the incident a 'terror attack' while Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said it 'appears to be a hate crime given the group that was targeted'.
Shocking footage from the scene showed several victims laying motionless on the ground beside Israel flags as witnesses rushed to pour water on their wounds.
Soliman appeared to taunt the victims while brandishing bottles of alcohol for the Molotov cocktails in each hand as smoke rose from the scene.
Wearing only jeans and sunglasses, he yelled: 'End Zionists... they are terrorists' and 'free Palestine'. He also said: 'How many children have you killed?' according to the ADL Center on Extremism.
Disturbing footage of Soliman's attack showed EMTs used stretchers to move people into ambulances while flames spread in patches across the ground.
Another video showed what looked like a burn scar across the ground close to the city's old courthouse. Blackened burned-out bottles littered the scene.
The Boulder attack occurred as law enforcement authorities in the US grapple with a sharp spike in antisemitic violence.
It comes just over a week after a man was arrested over the fatal shooting of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC on May 22.
The victims were identified as German-Israeli dual national Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and his girlfriend Sarah Milgrim, 26.
Lischinsky had been planning to propose to Milgrim after buying a ring.
The suspect, 30-year-old Elias Rodriguez, repeatedly shouted 'Free Palestine' after shooting them dead, as police dragged him away.
Jewish human rights organization the Simon Wiesenthal Center told DailyMail.com the Boulder attack came on the first day of a religious holiday.
'On the eve of Shavuot, a sacred celebration of Jewish identity and tradition, we are forced yet again to confront a horrifying reality: Being Jewish, supporting Israel, or simply gathering as a community now makes American Jews a target,' the center's CEO Jim Berk said.
'This afternoon in Boulder, Colorado, a man threw a Molotov cocktail into a peaceful solidarity walk calling for the release of 58 hostages still held by Hamas, a humanitarian cause that should unite, not divide.'
He blamed the attack, as well as the murders of the Israeli embassy staffers, on 'months of anti-Israel propaganda, moral equivocation, and silence in the face of raging antisemitism'.
'The nonstop demonization of Israel and Zionism on our campuses, in our streets, and across digital platforms has created a climate where hate flourishes, and physical attacks—even murder—of Jews is inevitable,' Berk said.