Judah Samet, who survived the Holocaust and decades later avoided the deadliest antisemitic attack in United States history by mere minutes, died Sept. 27, in Oakland, CA. He was 84.

Mr. Samet survived the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp as a child during WWII, and was in the parking lot of the Tree of Life synagogue in 2018 when a gunman entered the building and killed 11 people.

He had, indeed, lived a remarkable life, his nephew Larry Barasch, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “He grew up in Hungary, survived the Holocaust, became orphaned upon leaving the camps, moved to Israel and found his mother. He joined the Israeli Defense Forces as a paratrooper and radio man, fought side-by-side with General Moshe Dayan for Israeli independence. He immigrated to Canada, married Barbara Schiffman and became a well-known jeweler in Pittsburgh, working for my grandfather, Irving Schiffman.”

He was a long-time member of the Tree of Life congregation and was an active participant in services for some 40 years. On Oct.27, 2018, he arrived late to the Shabbat service at Tree of Life, and was still in the parking lot when the gunman entered the synagogue.

Mr. Samet did not speak about his experience during the Holocaust for nearly 60 years. But over the past two decades, he spoke to tens of thousands of students about his experiences. He told people it was important to him, as a survivor, to give direct testimony because soon there would be no one to tell the story of the Holocaust.