Awesome bravery amid the bullets on Bondi Beach: A year after the massacre of men, women and children celebrating a Jewish festival by the ocean in Sydney, survivors recall the desperate battle for survival for the first time

As she lay on the ground, shielding a terrified little girl from the bullets flying around them, five-months pregnant Jessica Rozen summoned every ounce of courage to stay calm.

The child was a stranger: Jessica didn't know her name, or where her parents were.

Just moments earlier, she had been frantically searching for her own young son, but then she had spotted the little girl, alone and screaming, and instinctively thrown herself on top of her.

'It's okay. I've got you. We're going to be safe. Nothing's going to happen to us,' she whispered, desperately trying to soothe the sobbing child.

Yet even as she spoke those reassuring words, Jessica, 37, witnessed something so appalling that it will forever remain seared into her memory.

'A lady was lying maybe a metre, a metre and a half from me, and then she was shot in the head,' she recalls. 'Her body turned with the impact. She was a person, and then she was not a person.'

She pauses, then continues: 'This was a whole person reduced to pieces of flesh in the grass.'

Pieces of flesh that, horrifically, landed in Jessica's hair, and whose blood dripped down her forehead as she wondered if she was next.

'All I could do was lie there,' she recalls. 'It was a matter of time.'

Naveed Akram (pictured) and his father allegedly shot dead fifteen people during the antisemitic attack Bondi Beach in Sydney last December

Emergency services are pictured attending to victims of the shooting, which occurred during a celebration of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah

Because for Jessica, and hundreds of others gathered on Sydney's Bondi Beach on a beautiful summer's afternoon last December, what should have been a joyful celebration for the city's Jewish community had, in moments, descended into a massacre.

Just after 6.40pm on December 14, two gunmen took up position on an elevated footbridge overlooking Archer Park, a small grassy area behind Bondi Beach, and opened fire with rifles.

Their targets were the thousand or so people attending 'Chanukah by the Sea', an annual family event marking the beginning of the Jewish festival. Within eight minutes, dozens had been injured and 15 people, including a ten-year-old girl, were dead. Almost a year later, the terror rampage claimed its 16th victim when 90-year-old Eva Geller, a Holocaust survivor who was shot during the attack, died in hospital.

Australia's worst mass shooting in almost three decades made headlines around the world and now, as its first anniversary approaches, a harrowing

Channel 4 documentary reconstructs those terrible minutes through the testimony of survivors, bereaved families, witnesses and first responders, many speaking for the first time.

Their accounts – revealed today exclusively in the Daily Mail – show not only the almost unimaginable horror of what unfolded, but the extraordinary decisions made by ordinary people as they fought to save themselves and those around them.

An afternoon that had begun with children having their faces painted and stroking animals in a petting zoo ended in devastation when the noise of rapid gunfire pierced the evening air – initially mistaken by some in the crowd as fireworks.

But not Leibel Lazaroff. Hailing from Texas, the then 20-year-old trainee rabbi knew immediately what it was. He had briefly returned to his car when the first shots rang out and, taking cover beside it, watched as the gunmen fired down from their elevated position on the bridge.

Footage from the attack showed bystander Ahmed Al-Ahmed grabbing one of the terrorists from behind and wrestling away his firearm

10-year-old Matilda Britvan (pictured) was the youngest person killed in the Bondi massacre

Mourners pictured gathering around floral tributes at Bondi Pavilion honouring the victims of the shooting 

From her home directly opposite the beach, former trauma nurse Kaitlin Davidson was witnessing the same terrible scene.

She could see the gunmen coolly taking aim at people below, firing and reloading their weapons without apparent hesitation.

'There was no pause or inhibition,' she says. 'Just killing.'

Events unfolded with bewildering – and savage – swiftness.

Leibel soon realised a police officer called to the scene had been shot. Hearing him cry out, he crawled over and fashioned a makeshift tourniquet from his T-shirt, trying to stem the bleeding as the shooting continued. The wounded officer managed to fire several more rounds before collapsing again – and as Leibel begged the officer to give him his gun, he felt a sudden jolt.

Looking down, he realised he had been shot in the stomach, leaving a gaping wound which he believed was fatal. 'I'm 20 years old. I never expected to die this way,' he recalls thinking. 'I thought I was going to get married and have a full life, and now my life's ending, and this is how it ends.'

Elsewhere in the park, Elon Zizer, 40 – who had attended the celebrations with his two young children and his parents, Irene and Simon – was also forced to confront his own mortality.

The family were standing beside a bench, 30 yards from the steps of the footbridge, when the shooting began. As bullets tore through the crowd, all three adults threw themselves to the ground, forming a protective huddle around the terrified children as the gunmen continued to take aim.

The Bondi Beach terrorist attack was the deadliest mass shooting in Australia since the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, in which 35 people were killed

'We were the front row, and this guy was getting very close,' he recalls. 'I knew we were f***ed. But I would always rather die trying than just be executed.' Yet even as Elon contemplated what he might do, a bullet struck him. Then another, then another. In all, he was shot six times.

His parents could only watch in horror as, blood pouring from his wounds, he fell backwards and started rolling away. 'I was screaming to him, 'Where are you going, Elon? Elon, don't go away',' Irene recalls through tears. 'He's my son. I didn't want him to die.'

But that was Elon's plan: believing these were his last moments, he made a conscious decision to put some distance between himself and his family, in the hope of sparing his children one final, terrible memory.

'I didn't want them to have that trauma, that memory, of watching Daddy die,' he explains. 'So I wriggled away on my back.'

His parents, still trying to protect their grandchildren, could only watch helplessly. 'He stopped talking,' Simon recalls. 'I was crying and saying, 'Elon, hold on, just wait a little bit more... you're gonna be okay'.'

Pregnant Jessica Rozen had not even wanted to attend the celebrations, having been struggling with morning sickness, but her husband and two young children had persuaded her to go. Now, as gunfire erupted around them, she watched her husband run towards the fence line with their daughter in his arms. 'I had no doubt that he would keep her safe, but I couldn't see my son,' she recalls.

She was desperately searching the crowd screaming his name when she spotted the little girl who would become her focus.

Jessica recalls remaining composed as she tried to reassure the sobbing child.

A NSW police officer is pictured on the footbridge where the gunmen fired from

Emergency services treating victims at Bondi Beach

'I could see clearly that there were two shooters. I was not panicked. I understood that it was important that I didn't. So I just asked her name,' she says. Thankfully her son was later found safe and the little girl was reunited with her family.

But all around them, others were making similarly selfless decisions, at huge risk to themselves. Over the course of the attack, six civilians confronted or attempted to stop the gunmen. Among them was Ahmed Al Ahmed, an unarmed 43-year-old Syrian Australian who tackled one of the gunmen and wrestled his firearm from him, before being shot by the other shooter.

While he survived, others paid with their lives, among them 62-year-old businessman Reuven Morrison, who bravely rushed towards the attackers and tried to disarm them.

Lifeguards and other first responders also courageously ran towards the ongoing carnage, some having left a training course on treating shark bites only minutes earlier.

For others trapped in the park, there was nothing they could do but freeze and hope that they and their loved ones would survive.

Simon Sawday, 39, recalls the horror of seeing a woman shot beside him as he cowered behind a small ledge with his son. 'As I looked at her, I saw a large part of her head disappear,' he says. 'Then I heard a really loud splash, which was a lot of her blood splashing on the floor. There was still just a sense of me that was just still in disbelief, that just couldn't grasp what was happening.'

Chana Deitz, 42, who like so many parents had thrown herself protectively over her young daughter, remembers her little girl worrying that the face paint she had received earlier had been ruined, while beside them a man was dying. 'He had blood coming out of him, and he was losing colour in his face,' Chana recalls.

'I couldn't do anything. I couldn't even move on the ground because I had my daughter.'

She began reciting the Shema Yisrael, the Jewish central declaration of faith.

She breaks down as she remembers those final moments. 'I have seen death, but I had not seen someone be murdered,' she says.

Of all the accounts featured in the documentary, few are more heartbreaking than that of Michael and Valentyna Britvan, whose ten-year-old daughter Matilda was the youngest fatality.

Forensic officers pictured examining a victim's body at the scene shortly following the incident 

A sunny, affectionate little girl, Matilda had come to the Hanukkah celebrations with her parents and younger sister, Summer.

Michael, 46, and 49-year-old Valentyna had moved to Australia from their native Ukraine before their daughters were born, building a new life in a country they believed would offer their family safety and opportunity.

Before the shooting, their daughters had been enjoying all the innocent pleasures of the festival, proudly showing off their face paintings. Matilda had asked for her face to be decorated with a dolphin, which she asked her mum to photograph.

Shortly afterwards, the first bullets were fired, and Michael and Valentyna recall their frantic search for their daughters, peering through overturned chairs at the terrified crowds.

Michael spotted Summer first, unharmed, but then he heard Matilda scream. 'And that's when I saw her,' he recalls. 'She was just lying there, and I could see there was some blood around, but she was still conscious.'

Matilda had been shot in the abdomen. 'I took off my shirt, and I put as much as possible pressure on her wound... I could see she recognised me. She was holding my hand, squeezing.' As he tried desperately to stop the bleeding, he spoke to his daughter, willing her to hold on, telling her: 'You will be okay. Just stay strong. Stay with us.'

Heartbreakingly, it was not enough. Matilda was alive when she was rushed to hospital, where doctors battled to save her life, but her injuries were too severe.

Almost a year later, the enormity of their loss remains impossible to comprehend. 'I miss her cuddles every day,' Valentyna says through tears.

The rampage lasted around eight minutes before one of the gunmen, Sajid Akram, who had returned to the footbridge to retrieve another weapon, was shot by police and died. The other alleged attacker, his son Naveed, was also shot but survived. He is in prison and expected to face trial next year.

Kaitlin, the nurse who had witnessed the shootings from her home, recalls how she ran outside barefoot to help a wounded female police officer, only to step onto ground littered with spent bullet casings.

Nearby, paramedics were attempting to resuscitate the gunmen themselves. 'I was almost sick to my stomach, but also I wanted them both to survive and then have to face the families of the victims,' Kaitlin says.

In the hours and days that followed, families across Sydney waited desperately for news of loved ones, while doctors fought to save those who were critically injured.

Among them was Elon Zizer, the father who had tried to spare his children from witnessing him die, who would undergo 12 operations and spend ten days in a coma.

'According to the doctor, one or two millimetres in another direction was game over,' he says. 'One second, I was so fit and healthy, and the next minute I was fighting for my life... I'm just grateful to be here.'

Trainee rabbi Leibel, too, survived against the odds, undergoing ten operations in just three weeks. On January 22, the day he was finally discharged from hospital, he went straight to a national memorial service at the Sydney Opera House and participated in the performance of a Jewish memorial song which reflects on centuries of persecution.

'My grandmother was hunted for being Jewish and two generations later, I am,' he says.

'History repeats itself if we choose to make the same mistakes as we always did.' Indeed, the documentary exposes the shattering of the sense of safety among Jewish Australians who had believed their country was a refuge from the hatred that had blighted previous generations.

For Matilda's parents, the bewilderment is intertwined with their profound and ongoing grief. 'I really thought that this hate for Jews was past,' says Michael.

As the first anniversary of the tragedy looms, those who were there that day hope that around the world, people can place their politics aside to remember that the victims that day were just ordinary families.

'What I want people to know is that we were just at a family festival with face painting and rock climbing and a kids petting zoo,' Simon Sawday says. 'We weren't in conflict. We weren't promoting hate against anyone else. We were at a family festival in Bondi Beach.'