My great-great-grandparents were murdered at their synagogue on Shabbat. I thought I was safe.

I was with my babushka, a Holocaust survivor, when I saw the news on Oct. 27 that 11 people in Pittsburgh were shot and killed at a Shabbat service at Tree of Life synagogue. It was horrifying, and deeply personal. The shooter, who perpetuated a modern-day pogrom, referenced the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), which provides humanitarian aid assistance to refugees. The organization, which was founded in 1881, helped my own family resettle from Odessa, Ukraine to San Francisco in 1988.

My family waited for more than 13 years to get permission to leave the former Soviet Union. My grandparents lost their jobs as they were perceived to be traitors. This was common, unfortunately.

We finally made it to the U.S. when I was 1 year and 7 days old. My grandfather always told me about this day and reminded me it was the luckiest of my life because I did not have to grow up with the realities he did. He believed in the America of opportunity and in the America that treated people like human beings.

The shooting at Tree of Life left me thinking: This is exactly what we fled. This is not just devastating and saddening, but it leaves me feeling afraid for my own safety. I thought these fears were from the old world and did not apply to me here, but any sense of safety burst and the reality set in. It is a reality that many people of color face every day in this country.

I’ve been thinking of my great grandparents, Lyubov (who went by Luba, who I’m named after) and Yehokaim. Luba’s parents were murdered at their synagogue on Shabbat more than 100 years ago, in the small community of Krivoye Ozero in Ukraine. My mom grew up hearing stories directly from Luba, her grandmother, describing the day she ran into the synagogue to find her mother covered in blood. She and her siblings had stayed home that day because they were sick.

Luba and her four siblings, all younger than 15, fled to the outskirts of Odessa where they were taken in briefly by distant relatives. Luba eventually became a midwife, and married my great grandfather, Yehokaim, who was a Yiddish writer. Several decades later, Yekohaim was murdered for being too outspoken about his Judaism during the Soviet regime. My family only learned of what happened to him 20 years later; that became the major impetus for our family’s decision to flee.

The day of the shooting in Pittsburgh, I was too heartbroken to share the news with my babushka. I had to get myself to one of my favorite parts of San Francisco, the Richmond district. It’s the Soviet Jewish refugee and immigrant enclave I was raised in, and the best place to get some much needed Russian comfort food. My body was in shock: These events touched on a reality that has been all too familiar to my ancestors, my people, and unfortunately, to many other communities marginalized daily in this country.

LUBA YUSIMlives in Oakland and is the senior communications associate at the Northern California Community Loan Fund. From 2010-12, she lived in Monterey while attending the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, where she earned a master’s degree in Public Administration in International Management.