With the deadly anti-Semitic shooting at a San Diego synagogue occurring just prior to Holocaust Remembrance Day, perhaps nobody felt it more viscerally than Judah Samet. A survivor of three Holocaust death trains, Samet came within a whisker of machine gun bullets at the Tree of Life synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh last October.
Judah welcomed Aish.com into his comfortable Pittsburgh home, to share his remarkable story of courage, faith and plain good luck – a life celebrated by millions at the 2019 State of the Union Address.
Genesis
In 1938, Judah Samet was born in Hungary to a prominent Orthodox family. His grandfather was a chassid who went to cheder with the Belzer Rebbe. (“They were lifelong friends,” Judah says.) As a child, Judah spent summers in Israel, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Nobel Laureate Shay Agnon who enjoyed hanging out at the bookstore operated by Judah’s grandfather in Mea She’arim.
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