Happy Birthday, Judah Samet. May he live to see many more. A very nice moment.

October 29, 2018
By Ryan W. Miller

Pittsburgh – Judah Samet (click here) was four minutes late to services on the Sabbath.

He always arrives on time, at 9:45 a.m. A conversation with his housekeeper on Saturday, though, kept him away from the massacre of 11 of his friends at the Tree of Life synagogue.

For the Hungarian-born 80-year-old, the targeted rampage at his place of worship was the second time anti-Semitism almost took his life. Samet survived 10 months in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during World War II and was just a stopped train ride away from Auschwitz.

Samet pulled into the parking lot of Tree of Life “around 9:49, maybe 9:50” on Saturday, he said. Then a man knocked on his car window....