Mumbai: Moshe Holtzberg, who survived the attack on Mumbai's Chabad House as a two-year-old on 26/11, found his first moments back in India nine years later equally traumatic, the nanny who had saved him said.

Sandra Samuels said that as soon as Moshe, 11, arrived in Mumbai on Wednesday, he felt terrified of the cameras that followed him everywhere. The psychiatrist accompanying him from Israel took three hours to calm him down.

"Moshe is very scared of camera flash guns. There is something in his subconscious mind that is connected to the horrific event," she said.

"He hates anybody taking his pictures. His brain recognises... because, when we got out of the Chabad House (during the attack in 2008), the media was all over. There were mikes, flashes. I think he has that memory. He remembers, he is afraid of it."

Moshe, who now lives in Israel, has arrived in India with his grandparents for the inauguration of a memorial to the 26/11 victims at Chabad House. Samuels, who too lives in Israel as an honorary citizen, has come with him.

"He would have really enjoyed his time in Bombay if the media hadn't been there," Samuels said. "When he was four, I got him a beautiful laser torch but when he saw its flash, he threw it away."

Moshe's father Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and mother Rivka, who were running the Chabad House, a Jewish cultural-religious centre, were killed with six others during the attack. Samuels managed to escape with the toddler.

On Thursday, Samuels told reporters she didn't feel she had done anything special.

"My baby (Moshe) was there; I had to do something. I got a chance (to escape); I took it," she said. "I have been extremely protective about Moshe and will always be there for him, whenever he calls me." PTI