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PITTSBURGH (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) — As a gunman stalked the rooms of Tree of Life synagogue Saturday morning, Barry Werber hid in a dark storage closet thinking about his family and about “trying to stay alive.”
“Let me be very honest, I was frightened, I was scared, I have a wife at home ill, and I have a son living in Squirrel Hill, and I didn’t want to leave them.”
Mr. Werber was one of the congregants who survived the mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue Saturday. Eleven others — including Melvin Wax, an 88-year-old man who hid alongside him in the closet — were killed.
Shortly before the unbelievable happened, Mr. Werber, Mr. Wax, Rabbi Jonathan Perlman, and congregants Richard Gottfried, Mr. Gottfried’s sister Carol Black and Daniel Stein had arrived to the basement of Tree of Life earlier than other members of the New Light Congregation — one of three congregations meeting that morning in the building.
Mr. Gottfried and Mr. Stein stayed in the kitchen, while the others mingled in the sanctuary area.
Mr. Werber, a close friend of Mr. Gottfried’s and Mr. Stein’s, said he doesn’t know exactly what the two were discussing in the kitchen, but can make a pretty good guess that they were checking the refrigerator and planning for the congregation’s Men’s Club breakfast on Sunday. Both were congregation leaders — Mr. Stein, the head of the religious committee, and Mr. Gottfried, head of the Men’s Club.
Back in the main area, Mr. Wax began leading the service.
“That’s when the problem started with the shooting,” Mr. Werber said. “I’m just grateful we didn’t have more members there. We probably had a number of people on the way, but they hadn’t arrived yet.”
When it became apparent that a gunman had entered the building, Rabbi Perlman pushed Mr. Werber, Mr. Wax and Ms. Black into the storage closet.
“Once the shooting started, we just wanted to stay alive,” Mr. Werber said.
He called 911.
“I always wear a cell phone on me,” he said — a little one that he called a “museum piece.”
“I got 911 on the phone as the shooting started, and I tried to describe what was going on. They were as calming as anything I could think of. The scary part of course was trying to stay alive.”
He told The Associated Press that he’s thankful his phone is older and didn’t light up when he was on the line with emergency dispatchers.
“We’d only been in that building a little more than a year, so we weren’t familiar with the room. I don’t know where the light switch was, and I’m glad I didn’t. If we knew where the light switch was, we’d probably be numbers 12 and 13.”
When the shots subsided, he said, Mr. Wax opened the door, only to be shot and fall back inside.
“There were three shots, and he falls back into the room where we were,” he said. “The gunman walks in.”
Apparently unable to see Mr. Werber and the other congregants in the darkness, the suspect walked back out.
Mr. Wax and Mr. Stein, 71, both of Squirrel, and Mr. Gottfried, 65, of Ross, were among the 11 victims in Saturday’s mass shooting at the Squirrel Hill synagogue.
Upstairs, the Tree of Life Congregation was meeting in another sanctuary.
“I heard a crash out in the lobby,” said Rabbi Jeffrey Myers. “I didn’t think much of it.”
He thought a stainless steel coat rack had collapsed, perhaps after a member had grabbed onto it for balance.
Then he saw members of the third targeted congregation — Dor Hadash — running down a set of stairs.
“I just had an instinct, this is not good,” Rabbi Myers said after a vigil Sunday night.
“I took the people who were closer to the front of the congregation to the front to try to find some egress. I regret that I couldn’t do anything more for the people who were in there,” he said.
By then the gunman had approached the sanctuary, and it wasn’t safe to go back for them.
While getting the first group out, he had advised the others to get down on the floor in hopes that the thick wooden pews would provide some shelter, he told NBC’s Today show on Monday.
Eight were left in the sanctuary. They included congregants Joyce Fienberg, Rose Mallinger and her daughter Andrea Wedner, brothers Cecil and David Rosenthal, married couple Bernice and Sylvan Simon, and Irving Younger.
He went back inside to get them.
“I ran through the back of the sanctuary, went up the stairs because the exit route I thought I could take, I didn’t think was a safe route because he would have a sight line,” he said on Today. “So I went up into the choir loft. I heard him execute my congregants….I called 911. I stood on the line for what seemed like an eternity. I heard footsteps. Fortunately there’s a bathroom up there but the lock didn’t work, so with all my might I just held on to the door and prayed God, don’t find me.”
A SWAT officer located and got him out of the building and directed him to run across the street — an image that was captured and circulated worldwide.
Ms. Fienberg, 75, of Oakland; Ms. Mallinger, 97, of Squirrel Hill; the Rosenthal brothers, 54 and 59, of Squirrel Hill; the Simons, 84 and 86 of WIlkinsburg; and Mr. Younger, 69, of Mount Washington, were killed.
Ms. Wedner, 61, was injured and is expected to survive.
Back in the basement, SWAT officer had also gone down into the basement and located Mr. Werber, Rabbi Perlman and Ms. Black in the basement storage closet and escorted them up a set of steps and out of the building.
In the other area of the Tree of Life building, Dor Hadash congregant and medical doctor Jerry Rabinowitz, 66, of Edgewood, was killed “on his way to be of help to others,” his rabbi, Cheryl Klein, said.
Dor Hadash congregant Daniel Leger, 70, was shot in the torso and is in critical condition.
“The police organizations, all of them, saved so many lives,” Mr. Werber said. “When they escorted us out of the building, they put themselves between us and the building itself so that any stray rounds would not impact us.”
The exact route of the gunman, Robert Bowers, 46, of Baldwin Borough, is not clear. Authorities said at a news conference Sunday that he opened fire within three areas of the Tree of Life building.
Once outside, police ushered Mr. Werber and the two others to the back of a police car, where they sat until the situation was under control.
“I was listening to the police radio while we were sitting in the police car, and listening to the calm, cool way they were handling the situation was amazing, even knowing that some of their own officers had been hit,” he said.
“I can’t praise them enough. They put their lives on the line. They kept us safe. They were very cordial and respectful. I mean I was wearing a yarmulke, and they ran us down to the car so fast it flew off my head. One of the young officers was kind enough to find it and give it back to me.”
Mr. Werber was then taken to the Children’s Institute parking lot on Shady Avenue to be interviewed by FBI agents in the back of a “black police van of some sort.”
“Then they got our cars from the [synagogue] parking lot. It was a crime scene, and we could not go there,” he said.
Then, Mr. Werber said he was taken to the Jewish Community Center to be interviewed by a victim specialist.
“Once we were finished being interviewed by them, I requested I leave. My wife had called me a number of times.”
Mr. Werber, 76, of Stanton Heights, emphasized how thankful he is to law enforcement, the 911 operator and neighboring Jewish organizations, including Beth Shalom and the JCC for their support.
He went to the JCC on Sunday, he said, and a woman from the Salvation Army “sat me down and helped me work out a lot of what I’d gone through.”
He said members of his congregation who were killed were important leaders in their faith community whom he’d known for decades. He and Mr. Stein attended the same congregation as children in East Liberty.
Mr. Wax often led services, Mr. Werber said.
“They were three fixtures of our synagogue. [Mr. Stein] helped arrange things for the synagogue. Richard [Gottfried] helped make sure everything we did was according to the laws of judaism,” he said.
“I think I want to forget this whole situation,” Mr. Werber said, his voice shaky over the phone. “Right now, the rabbi and members of the congregation, our co-presidents Steve Cohen and Barbara Kaplan are probably trying to find out what’s going on with the funerals for the members.”
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