Two rabbis, a young girl and a Holocaust survivor are among the victims of the Bondi Beach terror attacks

One of 15 people killed by two gunmen in an attack on a Jewish gathering on Australia’s famed Bondi Beach on Sunday was the rabbi who helped coordinate the event, friends and family confirmed.

Rabbi Eli Schlanger was hailed as an “extraordinary human being” on Monday as information emerged about the victims of what Australian authorities have called an anti-Semitic terrorist attack. The dead included another local rabbi, a ten-year-old girl and a man who survived the Holocaust.

Alex Ryvchin, co-CEO of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, told CBS News he believes a last-minute decision not to attend the event in suburban Sydney may have saved his life.

“For the past 10 years, the rabbi has invited me to speak and deliver a message. And this year, for the first time, I wasn’t there. I had my oldest daughter’s best friend’s bat mitzvah, so I was somewhere else,” he said.

“The rabbi who invited me, a dear friend of mine and who I would have stood next to, was one of the people slaughtered,” Ryvchin told CBS News, referring to Schlanger.

He said Schlanger was an “extraordinary human being” whose work in New South Wales state included helping the underprivileged and visiting people hospitalized with terminal illnesses.

Schlanger’s brother-in-law, Rabbi Mendel Kastel, also attended the event with his family.

“The last 24 hours have been really difficult,” Kastel told CBS News on Monday. “You know, losing a brother-in-law, a family member, so I’ve been directly affected by it. But at the same time, I have a role in the community to support others. It’s been very difficult.”

Kastel praised Schlanger as “a great young man, a person who was dedicated to his work.”

“He was involved in the community. People loved him. Wherever he went, he had a real interest in people and people were really interested in him. He visited people in hospitals, he visited people in prisons, he taught people, he taught bar mitzvahs. He inspired other rabbis with his enthusiasm and his positivity,” Kastel said.

Grieving residents of Sydney’s southern suburb of Bondi gathered Monday to lay flowers and mourn those killed after the attack. For Rabbi Kastel, it is that sense of community that is the essence of what Hanukkah symbolizes.

“We want to shine, we want to light those candles together, we want to put our arms around each other and really build a true Australian community where people feel valued, people feel loved and people feel cared for,” he said.

Who were the other victims of the Bondi shooting?

Australian authorities have not confirmed the identities of any of the victims, but friends, family and media reports have begun to piece together a picture of the lives lost, including a 10-year-old girl and an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor. The young victim has not yet been identified

At least 38 people, including two police officers, were still being treated in hospitals on Monday.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry said at least one Israeli national was among the dead, but provided no further information.

Another local rabbi, Yaakov Levitan, was also mourned as a victim of the attack during a fundraising campaign supported by the Jewish organization Chabad World HQ. The organization’s state chapter in the Australian state of New South Wales confirmed Levitan’s death, with the fundraising page for his family calling him “a much-loved and active member of the Sydney Jewish community.”

“He was a man of quiet devotion, known for his kindness and tireless efforts in helping others,” the newspaper said the tributewho called him “the cornerstone of his family: a devoted husband and father” and urged people to “urgently rally around the Levitan family.”

French President Emmanuel Macron said a French citizen, Dan Elkayam, was among the dead.

Larisa Kleytman told reporters outside St. Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney that her husband, Alexander Kleytman, was among the dead. According to the Australian newspaper, the couple were both Holocaust survivors.

The rugby club in the nearby Sydney suburb of Randwick posted an online tribute on Monday to his ‘loyal club volunteer Peter Meagher’, who said he was ‘caught up in these terrible Bondi Beach shootings and was sadly one of 15 innocent people who lost their lives.

The club said Meagher worked as a freelance photographer at the event, “and for him it was simply a catastrophic case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

The President of Slovakia, Peter Pellegrini, said Monday that a national of the European country was also among the dead, but he identified her only as Marika.