Abraham Friedman is still haunted by his experience at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where about 50,000 Jews perished. After the massacre last week in Pittsburgh, the terrible memories came back.

"I never thought anything like this could happen here," said the 95-year-old Teaneck man.

Friedman, who wears a velvet yarmulke on his head, is a regular at the synagogue. But after the attack last week, he says he's not feeling safe. Eleven Jews, mostly elderly people, were shot in a synagogue by an armed man who said he wanted the Jews dead.

This reminded Friedman of the anti-Semitism that he had come across while growing up in Europe.

"You think that when you go to pray, you will be safe," said Friedman, who depends on a wheelchair to get around. "Now I will be more nervous before going to the synagogue."

For many survivors, the rampage at Tree of Life was strangely familiar and a blatant warning about the omnipresence of anti-Semitism in America.

"This deeply shocked Jews around the world," said Michael Riff, director of the Gross Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Ramapo College in Mahwah. Riff said that many Americans had denied the rhetoric directed against Jews in the United States and presumed that antisemitic violence was a rarity here.

While the news of the Pittsburgh Massacre could have been particularly traumatic for those who experienced the Holocaust, Riff said it also affected the younger generation, who had never encountered this level of hate.

"It's an awakening all around," he said. "This kind of violence was unprecedented in this country and we were not prepared."

The Anti-Defamation League announced that the number of attacks against Jews had increased by nearly 60% last year, the largest increase since 1979. LDA officials called for the shooting in the Synagogue of the Tree of Life, which occurred at a ceremony marking the circumcision of a baby. , the most deadly antisemitic attack in the history of this country.

"I read the news and I thought we were back," said Felice Zimmern Stokes, of Teaneck, 77, a Holocaust survivor born in Germany whose parents were killed at Auschwitz.

"Anti-Semitism is so prevalent today, it's everywhere, and you really feel it, I do not know why they're so mad at us," said Stokes, who as a child survived Holocaust because a family in France is offered hide it.

Her conservative synagogue in Teaneck has a lot of security, she said, adding that she always saw a policeman guarding the building during services. Nevertheless, it is important that everyone is alert, she said.

"We are aware that this could happen again," she said. "We have to protect ourselves, I always watch who comes in."

Seniors in New Jersey who learned of the death of people their age while praying are also haunted.

Marlene Ceragno, coordinator of the JCC Kaplen Adult Activity Center, where Friedman and other elderly people gather for social activities, said that they had been devastated by the attack .

She stated however that years of experience had given them strength and that they would always go to the synagogue. "They are not afraid since they have experienced so much anti-Semitism in their lives," Ceragno said.

Arthur Goldstein of Fort Lee, 91, is a retired businessman.

He said he hoped to attend services this weekend, when synagogues across the country planned to hold a solidarity Shabbat, called #ShowUpForShabbat Campaign, to bring the community together to face the violence.

"I'm 91," joked Goldstein. "Nothing scares me anymore."

Instead, the incident has angered him. "It does not matter if you are young or old, you do not deserve to die violently," he said.

Like President Donald Trump, he believes attacks like Pittsburgh could be prevented by armed guards. He also wants more Jews to learn how to use firearms and apply for a carrier license to bring them to the temple. In case.

Then there is Blanche Rosenberg, 86, a retired Lakewood accountant, who said she was now afraid for her life.

"I never thought I would not feel safe in a synagogue," she said.

When she lived in Paramus while her children were growing up, she never heard anyone express hatred towards the Jews, she said. Today, while swastikas are sprayed on the synagogues, Jewish cemeteries are vandalized and Jews attacked in the street. "There is more and more anti-Semitism everywhere," she said.

Barbara Pitofsky, a former resident of Fair Lawn who now lives in Lakewood, said she felt the massacre "was an attack on me."

When she heard about the shooting, she immediately asked if anyone would target a temple in her neighborhood. Now she is afraid to set foot in a synagogue.

"Why do they hate us?" She wonders. "What did we do?"

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