Mar 9, 2020 3 min read

“For me, it never ends. For my family, it never ends.”

Those were the thoughts Judah Samet had cycling through his head when he was in his car outside the Tree of Life synagogue in Squirrel Hill on Oct. 27, 2018. He was running a few minutes late, so he wasn’t inside the building when a gunman stormed in and killed 11 of his fellow congregants and wounded six others.

It was the second time in Samet’s 82 years that he witnessed firsthand the brutality that can come with anti-Semitism. The first time was much closer to the beginning of his life, when the Hungarian native and his family were shipped from their home in Debrecen to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in northern Germany. With the exception of his father, who succumbed to typhus, Samet and his family survived and relocated to Israel. Samet eventually made his way to North America and stayed in Pittsburgh, where he worked in the jewelry business and was a teacher. He visits schools, colleges, universities and other organizations throughout the Pittsburgh region to talk about his experiences as a Holocaust survivor, and was at Ringgold Middle School Friday afternoon.

Pete Klugh, principal of Ringgold Middle School, told students they were “maybe the last generation” that will be able to hear firsthand recollections from Holocaust survivors. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II and the liberation of the European concentration camps.

He was still a young boy at the time, but Samet recalled the chill of the cattle cars that shipped prisoners to the camps, and the deprivations they endured once they were there.

“My mother would go to a nearby village and bring us some food,” Samet recalled. “Just enough to keep us alive.”

Samet was in Bergen-Belsen with his two brothers and a sister, and he said his mother protected them, “like an eagle spreading her wings.”

By the time he was 7 and his family made it out of the concentration camp, “I had seen more dead people than live people,” Samet said. But, he said, the protection provided by his mother softened the traumas of the experience.

“It affected my stomach because I was always looking for food,” he explained.

He also said he has never lost hope.

“Never. I’m a very positive-thinking person.”

Samet will be making another appearance in the Mon Valley at 2 p.m. April 5, when he recounts his experiences at the Donora Public Library. It’s being sponsored by the Donora Historical Society in conjunction with a traveling exhibit on World War II at the library.