(PHOTOS IN EXTENDED ARTICLE)

Yechiel Oaring is a second generation Zaka volunteer. His father, Bentzi, heads Zaka Jerusalem and is an iconic figure on the streets of the capital, present at every incident and terror attack for the last two decades. However, when fire broke out on Thursday, 26 Tammuz in a Jerusalem apartment building, forcing the evacuation of all the residents, Bentzi was unable to answer the call as he is sitting shiva for his mother.

Yechiel, with more than a decade of Zaka volunteering under his belt, headed off for the scene: “As someone who has grown up in a house of chessed, it was clear to me that I had to leave the shiva house and help”.

Yechiel was captured on camera rescuing a young child from the scene – reminiscent of an image of his father rescuing a baby from a suicide attack in 2002. That image was one of the defining images of the Second Intifada.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem/Photo Credit: Zaka)