Throughout the world, violent antisemitic attacks continue to occur, including incidents in Toulouse, France (March 2012); Brussels, Belgium (May 2014); Copenhagen, Denmark (February 2015), Charlottesville, Virginia (August 2017), Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (October 2018) and Poway, California (April 2019).
Judah Samet, a Holocaust survivor who lives in Pittsburgh, has been a member of the Tree of Life synagogue for over forty years. In this clip of testimony, Judah reflects upon surviving the attack that occurred there in October 2018.
About the Interviewee
Judah Samet (born Avraham Yehuda), son of Kalman and Irenka, was born on February 5, 1938, in Debrecen, Hungary. Judah had two older brothers, Paul and Tibor, and one younger sister, Henja. The family, who were Orthodox Jews, owned and operated a knitting factory. On March 19, 1944, German forces occupied Hungary, and approximately 440,000 Jews were deported from Hungary to concentration and death camps. The Samet family was sent on a train toward the Auschwitz camp complex in Nazi-occupied Poland, but Czech partisans blew up the train lines, and the train was rerouted to Bergen-Belsen, a concentration camp in Germany. Judah and his family were at Bergen-Belsen for eleven months. In April 1945, while Judah and his family were being deported further into Germany, the train they were on was liberated by American troops.
Judah was in a displaced persons’ camp in Hillersleiben, Germany, for six months. He was then sent to Marseille, France, and to British Mandate Palestine. While his immediate family all survived the Holocaust, Judah’s father died shortly after liberation. Judah immigrated to the United States in 1962, and he settled in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He met and married his wife, Barbara, and they have one daughter and two grandsons. In October 2018, Judah witnessed the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting. Judah was interviewed by USC Shoah Foundation in 1997 and in 2019.