The family of the most seriously injured victim of the machete attack on a Hanukkah party is praying that he emerges from a coma to find a “changed world” — but his chances of recovery are slim, his youngest daughter said Thursday.
“We hope he wakes to a changed world with peace, unity and love for all,” Nicky Kohen said.
“Let’s stand up together and stop the hatred.”
During a news conference outside her Rockland County home, Kohen made an emotional plea to end the anti-Semitism that federal prosecutors say motivated Saturday’s bloodbath, The Associated Press reported.
“We want our kids to go to school and feel safe,” Kohen told reporters.
“We want to go to synagogues and feel safe. We want to go to grocery stores and malls and feel safe.”
Josef Neumann, who turned 72 on Monday, has been in a coma since he and four other men were stabbed and slashed while celebrating the Jewish Festival of Lights in Rabbi Chaim Rottenberg’s Monsey home.
Neumann underwent a tracheotomy Thursday at the Westchester Medical Center to help him breathe and be fed, The Journal News reported, but Kohen said that his “doctors do not have high hopes for him.”
“If he wakes up he may never be able to walk, talk or even process speech again,” she said.
Neumann’s son, David, wiped away tears while discussing his dad’s fight for life.
“I hope he wakes up soon and can tell you himself,” David Neumann said.
“All I know is they are not very hopeful.”
Josef NeumannOJPACIn a statement released Tuesday night, Neumann’s family said that the machete “penetrated his skull directly into the brain” and that if he survives, he’ll be “partially paralyzed and speech-impaired for the rest of his life.”
Neumann also suffered a shattered right arm, but his condition is “so dire” that surgeons haven’t attempted to repair it, the statement added.
Neumann is the most grievously injured of five Orthodox Jewish men allegedly hacked by Grafton Thomas, 37, after he stormed into the Monsey home of Rabbi Chaim Rottenberg.
The Orthodox Jewish organization Chabad of Suffern has launched an online fund-raiser for the victims at the helpmonseyvictims.com website.
As of Thursday evening, donors had chipped in more than $12,500 toward a $100,000 goal.
Thomas is charged with five counts of attempted murder and federal hate crimes that are based on alleged “anti-Semitic sentiments” in journals he kept.
Thomas was allegedly covered in blood and had the machete stashed under the passenger seat of his car when NYPD cops busted him in Harlem about an hour after the attack.
Defense lawyer Michael Sussman has denied that Thomas is anti-Semitic, saying he has a history of psychosis and was off his meds at the time.



