20 years on: Yankel missed every day
ON the 20th anniversary of Melbourne student Yankel Rosenbaum’s murder during a New York riot, his brother Norman, who campaigned doggedly to bring justice to his slain younger sibling, appears to have scored one more victory.
ON the 20th anniversary of Melbourne student Yankel Rosenbaum’s murder during a New York riot, his brother Norman, who campaigned doggedly to bring justice to his slain younger sibling, appears to have scored one more victory.
After the Caulfield lawyer and his family wrote to the organisers of a panel discussing the mayhem that claimed the 29-year-old Chassidic scholar’s life on August 19, 1992, Reverend Al Sharpton, a preacher, who played a pivotal role in the violence in Crown Heights, pulled out of the forum.
Comparing the riots in the Brooklyn neighbourhood to the recent London riots, Rosenbaum said: “There’s a fallacy that’s been perpetuated that the [Crown Heights] riots arose out of disharmony or issues or conflict between the African-American community and the Jewish community. That’s not true. The riots evolved out of racist anti-Semites taking advantage of a tragic motor car accident.”
Rosenbaum played a key role in securing the murder conviction of Yankel’s knife-wielding assailant Lemrick Nelson Jr and gaining a $1.6 million payment from a New York hospital for negligence in treating Yankel’s wounds.
Recalling this week his reaction when he first heard news of his brother’s death, Rosenbaum said: “It was just beyond belief. If somebody had said he’d been run over by a bus or had been mugged, I think that would have made more sense to me. But for somebody to say there was a riot, [it was] too unbelievable.
“My family and I miss him every single day. The fact that it’s already 20 years … it feels like it’s yesterday. Time hasn’t healed anything, I can tell you that.”
“He was a character, a real character. There was some part of Yankel’s make-up that every single person could identify with. When I lost a brother, everybody lost a brother.”
PETER KOHN AND ZEDDY LAWRENCE
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