“We came here from Ukraine … and I named her Matilda because she was our firstborn in Australia. And I thought that Matilda was the most Australian name that could ever exist.
“So just remember … remember her name.”
Holocaust survivor Alex Kleytman was also among the dead.
Matilda had been separated from her parents when gunshots rang out, as she was playing with animals at a petting zoo, her father revealed to Sky News.
“While the shooting was still going on, I saw Matilda. She ran to where we were. I saw her go down and I crawled to her,” he said.
“I took my shirt off and stuck it on her wound.
“I was talking to her. She was in shock telling me ‘It’s hard to breathe’.
“I was holding her saying ‘calm down’.”
She died in front of her 6-year-old sister.
Matilda’s mother Valentyna has also spoken about the moment her daughter was killed.
“I can’t imagine what monster stands on that bridge, and seeing a little girl running for her father, to hide with him, and he just pulled his trigger on her,” she said.
The first of the funerals for the 15 victims of the terror attack, in which two gunmen opened fire on crowds celebrating Hanukkah in Bondi, began on Wednesday with an emotional ceremony for Rabbi Eli Schlanger.
Before the service began, Schlanger’s wife Chayale wept as she and other family members threw themselves on the coffin.
Her father and Schlanger’s father-in-law Rabbi Yehoram Ulman shook with grief as he took to the stage, pausing to lay his hand on the coffin.
“Whatever I say today will be such an understatement to what you meant to everyone and to your family and to me, personally,” he said.
“Eli, from the moment you married Chayale, you became a son to us, as much as she is our daughter, and you became everything to me.”
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