MEQUON, Wis. — A survivor of the Bondi Beach terrorist attack that killed 15 people at a Hanukkah celebration in Australia is sharing his story with the Milwaukee-area Jewish community.
Rabbi Leibel Lazaroff, who was wounded in the December 2025 shooting, spoke Wednesday evening at the Peltz Center for Jewish Life in Mequon. Lazaroff was shot in the abdomen and leg while helping run the Hanukkah festival at the iconic Sydney beach. He waited 45 minutes for an ambulance.
"It kind of felt like a zap through the body, and then I fell to the ground," Lazaroff said. "The damage was really bad, and I could feel it. I could feel myself losing my life force."
Raised in Texas, Lazaroff was on a service mission when the attack began.
"People thought it was fireworks, balloons. No one really knew it was happening until a few more went off and people started falling, that everyone realized, and then everyone started running," Lazaroff said.
Read more: Bondi Beach terror attack survivor shares his story with Mequon Jewish community
Lazaroff credits prayer and willpower with his survival, and he has since made it his mission to share what he lived through.
"My grandmother was hunted down for being Jewish (during the holocaust), and everyone always said it's never going to happen again. And here we are in 2026, and it happened in 2025, where I was hunted down just for being Jewish... And it's something we need to try and combat as much as possible," Lazaroff said.
Among those in the audience Wednesday was Mushka Lisker, an educator at the Peltz Center who helped bring Lazaroff to Mequon. Lisker lost a close family friend — someone she knew from growing up in Australia — in the attack.
"Something which was really unthinkable to me, and still something that I can't believe actually happened," Lisker said. "It's really important to remember them and carry their legacy forward."
Lazaroff said his purpose in speaking publicly is to ensure the attack is not forgotten — and to inspire action.
"My goal is to be able to impact the person listening, that they should be able to internalize what I got to learn while going through such an experience," Lazaroff said.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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