Pittsburgh (CNN) Judah Samet was around 6 or 7 when he watched as a Nazi soldier put a gun to his mother's head, simply because she spoke without being spoken to while on a train headed to Auschwitz.

On Saturday, the 80-year-old Holocaust survivor, watched as a gunman mowed down his friends at Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

"It just never ends. It's never completely safe for Jews. It's in the DNA. Not just America's DNA but the world's," Samet told CNN.

Judah Samet visits Tree of Life synagogue.

Samet was running four minutes behind on Saturday, although he is almost never late to synagogue.

When he arrived, he could hear bullets flying flying from a gunman inside his place of worship. He could see the man who would be charged with a hate crime for killing 11 people inside his place of worship.

Read More