Rose Mallinger, who was killed at the Tree of Life Synagogue yesterday, was 97 years old. 97 years. She lived through the Holocaust, was on this earth, a young woman as 6 million Jewish people were killed for being Jewish. Spent her whole life surrounded by people who looked at the atrocities of the Holocaust and said “never again.” Lived 97 years and died at the hands of a gunman who killed her for being Jewish.
According to other reports, however, one Holocaust survivor did narrowly escape being caught up in the mass shooting because he was a few minutes late to synagogue that day:
Judah Samet was four minutes late to synagogue.
Services at Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh start at 9:45 A.M. Samet, who is 80 years old, pulled into a handicapped spot in front of the building on the morning of October 27 at 9:49.
“Somebody knocked on my window,” Samet said. “There was this guy. Very calm and respectful. [He] told me, you better back up, there is an active shooting going on in your synagogue.”
It took Samet sixty seconds to process what the man was saying. Samet was born in Hungary. He turned eight years old at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany. He spent five and a half years in an orphanage in Israel. He has been a member of Tree of Life Congregation for fifty-five years.
“My God, my story doesn’t end,” he said.
Samet said that Rose Mallinger, who was in her 90’s, would attend the service each week with her daughter. “They sit behind me,” Samet said. “If I was inside the synagogue, I would be in the line of fire.”
sleepliving 