Exclusive: 83-Year-Old Holocaust Survivor Says Shooting at Her Synagogue Worse Than Hitler's Hatred
As members of the Jewish community in Poway, California, gathered at the Chabad of Poway synagogue on the morning of April 27, 2019, they were expecting to celebrate the last day of Passover but were instead met by an inexcusable act of hatred.
A 19-year-old suspect opened fire in the synagogue, injuring three people and killing one woman, Lori Kaye. Kaye jumped in front of Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein in order to shield him from the incoming bullets.
Ever since that haunting day, the community has been grieving the loss of the heroine while calling out the antisemitism that has plagued them for generations.
At her mother’s memorial on April 29th, Hannah Kaye passionately spoke of Lori Kaye’s contagious and loving personality.
“Everyone was her sister, everyone was her trusted confidante,” Hannah said. “Everyone was her friend.”
Jeanette Shabtay, an 83-year-old Holocaust survivor, echoed the words spoken by Hannah Kaye, “She was my friend!”
“We had a cup of coffee together a day before,” Shabtay told Liftable, a section of The Western Journal. “We went to the beauty parlor together … It’s like a big family.”
Shabtay was also at the synagogue that day, but she was late and missed the attack by only seven minutes. She and her son-in-law stayed there until the roads were opened again.
She said that a church across the street opened their doors and offered coffee and cold drinks to everyone from the synagogue while they waited.
Pulling from her past experiences, she contrasted the community of Poway and the ghetto she lived in during Hitler’s rise to power.
“This neighborhood, Poway, it’s a community that people love each other,” she said. “It’s not discriminating. And, you know, it’s not only Jews living here. It’s all mixed up.”
According to Shabtay, the current generation of Jews are more sensitive to the recent displays of antisemitism, like at the Tree of Life in Pittsburgh, than her generation because they haven’t lived through the same experiences.
“My generation that went through concentration camps is different than the younger generation that didn’t know hardships from the beginning and they take everything much harder now, but I went through it before,” she told Liftable.
Even though she has experienced hatred before, she says that this particular incident feels worse.
“Because I have children. I was only a 5… 6-year-old little girl when it was the Holocaust and when I came home I was 9 years,” she said.
She said it’s easy to grasp the hatred that Hitler and the Germans had for the Jews in the 1930s and 1940s, but it’s more difficult to understand hatred in the United States.
“The United States, heaven on earth for so many religions, it’s not discriminating,” she said. “Whoever is here could live in peace until one bad apple rises and wants to kill it.”
Shabtay believes the solution to the recent attacks on places of worship could be solved by people coming together, despite their religious differences, in order to protect the freedom of religion that our country was built on.
“We have to put our heads together and look for a way to work it out and the religion doesn’t have to be a factor in those things,” she told Liftable. “It should be free because we are a free country.”
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