A Holocaust survivor beat back death for a second time this weekend, having shown up four minutes late for service at the Tree of Life synagogue that was victimized by a mass shooting Saturday, The Washington Post reported.
"I survived the second time [Saturday]," Judah Samet, 80, told the Post.
Samet had escaped Germany’s Bergen-Belsen concentration camp more than 70 years ago and was in the parking lot, late for services, as a gunman slaughtered 11 people ranging in age from 54 to 97 years.
"I was four minutes late," Samet told the Post. "Instead of 9:45, I got there about 9:49, maybe 9:50."
When he pulled into a handicap spot, a man dressed in black told him there was an active shooter and advised him to back out carefully, he told the Post. He then saw a police officer exchanging gun fire.
"I wanted to see who he was shooting," Samet told the Post, adding the gunman emerged from the building "and had a shootout with police, then he went back and finished the job in my synagogue.
". . . I was in the line of fire. Luckily, I wasn't hit."
According to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, an estimated 50,000 people, including the child diarist Anne Frank, died in Bergen-Belsen, per the Post.
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