Holocaust survivor who fought off purse snatcher questions jail for attacker

Gina Zuckerman says assailant should perhaps receive mental health care, not prison time

By JTA 8 December 2016, 4:11 am

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Gina Zuckerman (Screenshot from New York Post video)

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.