Judah Samet

Judah Samet was born in Debrecen, Hungary on February 5, 1938, to an Orthodox Jewish family.^[1] His parents owned and managed two knitting factories and had four children: two sons, Moshe and Yakove, both older than Judah, and the youngest, a daughter, Henyah.^[1][2] The family lived across the street from the synagogue.^[3]

In March 1944, Nazis entered Debrecen and forced thousands of Jews into railcars with limited space, food and water.^[2] Samet remembers them being ignored by other citizens.^[2] He was with his family in a train going to the Auschwitz concentration camp, but it was rerouted to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp after Czechoslovak partisans reportedly destroyed train tracks.^[3][2] Samet's father had received tickets and passports to emigrate to the United States but the family was not able to leave in time.^[1] Before they were sent to Bergen-Belsen, Samet and his family were held at a lumberyard in Austria.^[4] They got to the camp around July 1944,^[3] where Samet could only eat flavored water ("soup") and "moldy, rock-hard bread" every day, and sometimes bit bones to try to ease the starvation.^[2] Samet and his siblings would receive some bread from their mother,^[2] which he described as the reason they stayed alive.^[5] Samet's mother told him to eat lice, which had infected the camp.^[5] A German soldier contemplated killing Samet's mother because she asked for more supplies, but his superior officer decided to keep her as an interpreter for the Gestapo.^[5][1] A fellow inmate of Samet's performed a surgery on Samet's abscess on the back of his head.^[1]

After eleven months in the camp Samet and his family were sent by train to an unknown location.^[3] It was speculated that they were going to the Theresienstadt Ghetto,^[1][2][4] or off a bridge.^[1] The train stopped in a forest close to Berlin, and an armored tank^[2] or infantry^[6] division showed up.^[2] Samet's father then pointed out that the tank's commander was American,^[1] and he was later revealed to be a Jew.^[7] Samet's father Yekutil died a week later from typhoid fever.^[2]

Through Paris and Marseille, Samet and his family moved to Israel in 1946, where they lived in an Orthodox orphanage.^[1][3][4] Samet graduated from a seminary high school.^[1][3]

After graduation Samet served in the Israel Defense Forces' Paratroopers Brigade.^[3][8] His brother Jacob died in the Suez Crisis as a machine gunner for the IDF.^[3] He also worked as a teacher and managed two towns for the government of Israel.^[1][3]

Joining family members, Samet moved to Toronto in 1961 and subsequently to New York City.^[2][3][4] In New York City, he worked at his uncle's coat factory.^[3] He met a teacher from Pittsburgh, Barbara, whom he later married and with whom he had a daughter, Elizabeth.^[1][2][3][9] Samet moved to Pittsburgh in 1962.^[2] He attended Duquesne University but did not graduate.^[3] In the Downtown Pittsburgh Clark Building, Samet managed and ultimately owned Irving Schiffman Jewelers, founded in 1941 by his father-in-law.^[2][10][11] Samet also worked as a teacher.^[9] He served for 40 years as a Torah reader and cantor at the Conservative Tree of Life – Or L'Simcha Congregation, where he had been a member since 1964.^[3][4]

From 2011, Samet gave public speeches about his life at high schools, universities, and churches.^{[2][3][6][12]} He said that he was "energized" by the positive reception of his speeches.^[3]

On October 27, 2018, eleven Jews were killed and seven injured in a mass shooting during Shabbat services at the Tree of Life building, marking the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history.^[4] Samet was four or five minutes late to the service because he had been delayed by his housekeeper.^[4] When he pulled into a handicapped spot on the parking lot, he was approached by a man who told him to leave due to the active shooter.^[4] Before pulling out of the parking lot unharmed, Samet had a clear vision of the shooting exchange between the gunman and a police officer.^[4]

I was flushed with (memories of) the concentration camp. It kind of descended on me. And I was thinking to myself, "It never ends, it never ends for my family." Whoever thought when you come to America, you're gonna go through the same thing all over again?

— Judah Samet, in Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (2018)^[13]

U.S. President Donald Trump invited Samet to be one of his personal guests at the 2019 State of the Union Address, which Trump gave on February 5, 2019.^[14] Samet visited the White House and met President Trump, First Lady Melania Trump, First Daughter Ivanka Trump, and Senior Advisor to the President Jared Kushner.^[12] After Trump introduced Samet in the Address and noted that it was Samet's 81st birthday, the crowd applauded, gave him a standing ovation, and sang "Happy Birthday" to him.^[15][16] Samet smiled, blew a kiss, waved down to Trump, stood up, bowed his head, and shouted "thank you". Trump jokingly conducted with his hands and said, "They wouldn't do that for me".^[15][16][17] He was not wearing his kippah at the Address because a government employee had told him "nobody wears a hat here" upon entering the House Chamber.^[18] Samet later said that he admired Trump and called him a "working man".^[12] A Republican, Samet supported Trump, saying about him: "I like him very much. He is strongly pro-Israel. That a man would go outright for Israel and declare for Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel ... that was something new."^[4][19] He was, however, not politically active, as opposed to his Democratic family members.^[20]

Samet died from complications of stomach cancer in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on September 27, 2022, at the age of 84.^[21]