Kira Perlman

Nov 21, 2002 - Kira Perlman, 67, of Jerusalem, was one of 11 people killed in a suicide bombing on a No. 20 Egged bus in the Kiryat Menahem neighborhood of Jerusalem.

The bomber, wearing a five-kilogram bomb belt packed with explosives and shrapnel, boarded the bus at approximately 7:00 A.M. on Mexico street in Kiryat Menahem. Before it reached the next stop, the terrorist, who was standing in the front section of the bus, set off the bomb, killing 11 people and wounding about 50.

Kira lived in Jerusalem's Ir Ganim neighborhood with her daughter-in-law Galia Perlman, her two grandsons, and her elderly mother.

The Perlman family had immigrated to Israel from the Ukraine in 1990. From the day Ilan was born in 1994, he and his grandmother, Kira Perlman, a Holocaust survivor, were inseparable. After his parents were divorced, his grandmother assumed the role of raising him so that his mother Galia could concentrate on her job at the supermarket. Kira, who accompanied her grandson Ilan everywhere, was taking him to school when they were killed on the bus together.

Tammi Davlas, Galia's best friend, said, "Grandma Kira's soul is now watching over hir little grandson up there in heaven."

Kira Perlman was buried together with her grandson Ilan in the Givat Shaul cemetery in Jerusalem. She is survived by her mother Jenya, 90, and her grandson Sinai, 15.