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| Photo Credit: AP. |
PITTSBURGH (AP) — Judah Samet, a Holocaust survivor who narrowly escaped a shooting rampage at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018, died Tuesday. He was 84.
Samet, who
survived the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in World War II, was running a
few minutes late for services at the Tree of Life of Life synagogue and was just
pulling into a handicapped spot when a man told him there was gunfire inside.
Samet saw an officer exchange fire with the assailant. Eleven people were
killed in the deadliest attack on Jewish people in U.S. history.
Afterward,
he said he was surprised something like this hadn’t happened sooner.
“I didn’t
lose the faith in humanity,” he told The Associated Press two days after the
shooting. “I know not to depend on humanity.”
Born in
Hungary on Feb. 5, 1938, Samet was 6 years old when the Nazis came to his house
and told them to pack. His family spent 10 months at Bergen-Belsen in Germany
before being liberated in 1945. His father died of typhus a few days later.
After the
war, Samet went to Israel, where he served as a paratrooper. He relocated to
Pittsburgh in the 1960s. Samet worked at his father-in-law’s jewelry shop and
later owned it.
Samet didn’t
talk publicly about his Holocaust experiences for decades. But by the 1990s,
with the release of the epic film “Schindler’s List” and with older survivors
dying of old age, he told himself, “My God, who’s going to tell this story?”
Samet
estimated that he spoke about his Holocaust experience to tens of thousands of
people at schools and other settings, mostly in the Pittsburgh area but as far
away as Montana.
“Unfortunately,
only people like me can bear witness,” he told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in
2020. But he said historians and others will need to tell the story in
compelling ways once the last generation of Holocaust survivors pass.
“Judah
leaves an unparalleled legacy to the world, of a man who survived not one, but
two horrors committed by humanity against the Jews,” Rabbi Jeffrey Myers of
Tree of Life said in a written statement. “He taught us how to respond with
controlled fervor, grace and strength.”
Samet sat
with first lady Melania Trump at President Donald Trump’s 2019 State of the
Union speech, where lawmakers jumped to their feet and applauded as the
president told Samet’s story and broke into a spontaneous rendition of “Happy
Birthday.” Samet smiled and shouted “thank you.”
“What a life
he had!” his nephew, Larry Barasch, wrote on Facebook in announcing Samet’s
death.
Samet’s
funeral was Thursday. He is survived by a daughter.