February 2008
As people were perishing all around them and smoke was billowing out of their room, two young parents desperately trying to save their daughter came to a gut-wrenching decision: they threw her out the window, praying that she would be caught by a crowd below.

The 9-month-old fell four stories, and her parents’ decision paid off. Lucky little Onur fell safely into the arms of a policeman below. The drama unfolded as dozens of onlookers watched frantically. News cameras captured the baby in free-fall as she
fell from the high-rise apartment building in Ludwigshafen, Southwestern Germany. The parents of the baby girl also survived, though the mother remained hospitalized two days after the incident.

Sadly, others weren’t so lucky. Nine other people died in the blaze, five of which were children. The building was home to Turkish immigrants, and some leaders feared that it might have been a politically motivated arson. A little girl told Germany’s
RTL television station that she had seen a man setting fire to something in the building.