Eleven killed at Tree of Life
27 October 2018Tree of Life synagogue, Wilkins and Shady Avenues, Squirrel Hill, Allegheny County, PA
A gunman walked into a Pittsburgh synagogue during Shabbat morning services in October 2018 and killed eleven worshippers - the deadliest antisemitic attack in the history of the United States.
Note: Describes a mass shooting in a place of worship.
Three congregations shared the building at Wilkins and Shady Avenues in Squirrel Hill, the oldest Jewish neighbourhood in Pittsburgh: Tree of Life*Or L'Simcha, Dor Hadash and New Light. All three were at Shabbat morning services on 27 October 2018.
The man who came in had spent months on a social network posting about the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, a Jewish refugee resettlement organisation that Dor Hadash had supported. He wrote that Jews were the children of Satan and that HIAS was bringing in invaders to kill his people. On the morning of the attack he posted that HIAS liked to bring in invaders that kill our people, that he could not sit by and watch, and that he was going in. Then he drove to the synagogue with an assault rifle and three handguns.
Eleven people were killed: Joyce Fienberg, 75; Richard Gottfried, 65; Rose Mallinger, 97; Jerry Rabinowitz, 66; Cecil Rosenthal, 59; his brother David Rosenthal, 54; Bernice Simon, 84; her husband Sylvan Simon, 86; Daniel Stein, 71; Melvin Wax, 87; and Irving Younger, 69. Two more worshippers were critically wounded and five police officers were shot.
It is the deadliest antisemitic attack ever committed in the United States. A federal jury convicted Robert Bowers on 16 June 2023 on sixty-three counts, including hate crimes resulting in death and obstruction of the free exercise of religious belief resulting in death, and recommended a death sentence on 2 August 2023. The ideology behind it was not improvised: the claim that Jews are organising non-white immigration to displace white people - the thing the torch-bearers in Charlottesville had chanted the year before - is the same claim, and the man who acted on it had been reading it daily.
Eleven worshippers from three congregations killed, two critically wounded and five police officers shot. The deadliest antisemitic attack in United States history.
Sources
- Jury Recommends Sentence of Death for Pennsylvania Man Convicted of Tree of Life Synagogue ShootingUnited States Attorney's Office, Western District of Pennsylvania, U.S. Department of Justice (2023)justice.govBacks the date, the eleven killed and two critically wounded, the five officers shot, the three congregations, the sixty-three counts of conviction and the jury's recommendation.
- Pennsylvania Man Charged with Federal Hate Crimes for Tree of Life Synagogue ShootingOffice of Public Affairs, U.S. Department of Justice (2018)justice.govThe charging documents, including the defendant's postings about the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and the statements quoted here.