Everyone has heard of the brave and heroic act of the nanny, Sandra Samuel, who saved 2 year old Moshe Holtzberg from the horrors that were unfolding at the hands of the terrorists in the Chabad House in Mumbai. But what she truly did in order to save this child is only just now becoming known and the bravery it took simply leaves me breathless.

Sandra Samuel was on the ground floor when the terrorists burst into the four-story building. She locked and barricaded herself into a room on that floor and hunkered down in terror for 12 hours as the gunmen ranged throughout the building, shooting immediately several of the hostages on the floors above, shooting from the windows and killing pedestrians on the street, killing and injuring people in apartments in buildings next door, killing a tailor in his shop down the street. Hours later they killed more of the hostages. And then there was a long lull in the shootings and noise. In that lull, she heard the baby crying.

When I first heard that she had “scooped up the baby and fled” I assumed that the baby was perhaps in the hallway outside her door or in a room across from where she was hiding. Had that been the case, her selfless act would have still been brave and heroic beyond measure. Many people in such situations of incredible fear for their own life think only of saving themselves, not because they are selfish or bad people but rather they are simply unable to cope because they are so overwhelmed with fear and panic. But the fact of the matter was that the baby was not in the hallway nor in a room nearby on that ground floor by the exit.

The baby was upstairs. The baby was upstairs where the terrorists were. The terrorists had gone up to the roof of the building but Sandra Samuel did not know that when she left her barricaded room and, rather than fleeing out the door to save her own life, crept up those stairs to where she could hear the baby’s cries. She did not know where the terrorists were when she went up into the killing grounds to try to save that little boy. At some point during those first 12 hours of siege, little Moshe has climbed out of his crib and his nanny found him sitting and crying, covered in blood, among the bodies of the victims. It was from this place that she scooped him and fled back downstairs and then out the door toward safety.

I will tell you that, untested, I’d like to believe that I too would climb up into the lion’s den to save a child –my own or someone else’s — but I don’t know if I would have that kind of strength, that level of bravery and heroism. I don’t know if, standing so close to freedom and in such fear for my own life, that I would be able to make myself climb those stairs up to where I would have a very good chance of coming face to face with a maniac with a gun who would be more than happy to slaughter me on sight. I keep picturing this woman, standing there at the bottom of the stairs like a classic scene from a horror movie where everyone in the audience is screaming, “no, don’t go up, are you stupid?!” –and still going up.

That, my friends, is not stupidity but the face of true heroism that simply takes my breath away.