Demolition of Tree of Life building begins, making way for memorial design

As contractors braved the bitter cold Wednesday and started demolishing parts of the Tree of Life-Or L’Simcha building, Carole Zawatsky grew nostalgic.

The head of a nonprofit working to rebuild the Squirrel Hill synagogue where 11 Jewish congregants were killed during a Shabbat service Oct. 27, 2018, Zawatsky said her thoughts during the demolition kept wandering back to her father, Murray.

The elder Zawatsky, a Jewish man who died 25 years ago this week at age 73, helped liberate the Mauthausen concentration camp with the Army’s 11th Armored Division in May 1945.

He didn’t talk with his daughter about his World War II service until, in adulthood, she helped stage a liberators exhibit at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

“To see violent antisemitism unleashed in America, after the Holocaust, is devastating for me,” said Zawatsky, 65, of Shadyside. “(The building) is coming down because of the horrific murder of 11 Jews.”

“There is a sadness, but it’s also a symbol of tremendous resilience,” she added. “Out of this tragedy … we are rebuilding and re-creating and establishing a new institution to remember, to memorialize, to worship and to educate.”

A cold, bumpy start

Demolition of the buildings at the corner of Wilkins and Shady avenues is expected to run through March. Pittsburgh firm Fay, S&B USA Construction, which is owned by an Israeli development company, is donating the work, estimated to cost about $500,000.

Fay, S&B USA Construction currently is building roads and bridges at Pittsburgh International Airport as part of a $1.57 billion project that includes construction of a new, 811,000-square-foot terminal.

Zawatsky said 80% of the Tree of Life buildings will be razed in the next two months.

The demolition work got off to a bumpy start at 8 a.m. Wednesday.

As the temperature registered 9 degrees and wind chills made it feel like 11 below, contractors couldn’t get water for the demolition from the building’s frozen pipes. As the day wore on, work progressed.

This spring or summer, construction will begin on a new, 45,000-square-foot Tree of Life building designed by renowned Polish-American architect Daniel Libeskind.

Libeskind, who is Jewish and the son of Holocaust survivors, designed the Jewish Museum Berlin in Germany. Stateside, he played a role in developing the New York City skyscraper once known as Freedom Tower, which replaced the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Plans call for the new building to house the Tree of Life-Or L’Simcha congregation, an education and research center, and the nation’s first museum that focuses on American antisemitism.

The nonprofit expects to release more concrete figures about the cost of new construction in a matter of weeks, Zawatsky said.

Officials aim to raise up to $75 million from local and national donors to cover construction, five years of operating budgets and an endowment ensuring long-term financial health.

The razing of the existing structures, first dedicated in 1952, will make way for a memorial honoring the 11 people killed during the 2018 shooting, the worst incident of antisemitic violence in U.S. history.

Killed in the 2018 synagogue attack were Rose Mallinger, 97; Bernice Simon, 84, and her husband, Sylvan Simon, 86; brothers David Rosenthal, 54, and Cecil Rosenthal, 59; Dan Stein, 71; Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz, 66; Joyce Fienberg, 75; Melvin Wax, 87; Irving Younger, 69; and Richard Gottfried, 65.

Each was a member of one of the three congregations that were housed in the building: Tree of Life-Or L’Simcha, Dor Hadash and New Light.

The gunman, Robert Bowers, 51, of Baldwin, was sentenced to death on Aug. 3 after a jury heard from 51 witnesses over nine days of testimony in his trial’s penalty phase. The trial stretched out over months under an intense media spotlight in a Downtown federal courtroom.

Bowers was found guilty of all 63 federal counts against him. Today, he is on death row in a federal penitentiary in Indiana.

‘Giddy excitement’

Alan Hausman, the president of Tree of Life-Or L’Simcha, last entered the synagogue on Monday.

In recent weeks, the floor of Pervin Chapel, where Hausman started attending services 15 years ago, was pulled up in order to remove asbestos and other hazardous materials. Holy objects already had been moved to off-site storage. The building, which had been expanded three times between 1964 and the 1990s, was stripped down to cement-block walls.

Hausman, an emergency management specialist with the City of Pittsburgh, braved Wednesday’s frigid temperatures to watch the demolition work begin.

“It’s exciting; it’s almost giddy excitement,” said Hausman, 64, who lives just blocks from Tree of Life on Squirrel Hill’s Shady Avenue. “But it’s also very emotional. This is the home people have known since 1952 — the weddings, bar mitzvahs, funerals. You’re seeing all that history go away.

“And it’s not of our own choosing,” he added. “This was forced upon us.”

Hausmen wondered aloud about whether the site would draw visitors, perhaps even hundreds a day.

“It does feel a little bit like we’re losing our local control, but it also feels like we’re contributing to a larger purpose,” Hausman said. “ ‘It’s no longer just a synagogue; it’s now a destination.’ Those are the words I use.”

Zawatsky thinks it can be both.

“It is something that, yes, is local to Pittsburgh,” she said. “And, for a national audience (it says) ‘We are never defined by our killers.’”

Designing a ‘jewel box’

Understanding Squirrel Hill is central to knowing Andrew Stewart.

Stewart’s family has been Tree of Life members for 60 years. His mother, now 93, still attends services regularly at Rodef Shalom, where Tree of Life-Or L’Simcha members have been worshipping for the past five years.

He went to Colfax Elementary School in Pittsburgh’s center of Jewish life. His bar mitzvah at Tree of Life on Nov. 9, 1974, was either the first or second event held in the then-new Robinson Pavilion.

Today, Stewart continues to call Squirrel Hill home. He sends his kids to Community Day School on Forward Avenue. He even works right in the neighborhood; the commercial development firm Silk & Stewart, where he’s a principal, is based in a converted Darlington Road house.

Stewart chairs the construction committee for the nonprofit Tree of Life and gets philosophical when talking about the work at the site.

“Everything with Tree of Life has a yin and a yang — and there’s tragedy and hope, pain and optimism,” said Stewart, 62. “It’s said you need to close a chapter to open a new one. And this is the physical embodiment of that. To create something new, what was needs to be left behind.”

Stewart’s been active in Pittsburgh’s Jewish community for 25 years, working with the Jewish Association on Aging and chairing committees formed by the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh.

His work at Tree of Life, he said, “is a privilege.”

“What we’re hoping for is to not only create a worthy memorial to the lives lost and touched by this,” Stewart said. “It’s equally important to create an institution that helps keep these things from happening, that helps educate people about antisemitism and joins in the fight against hate.”

“It will always be a part of this community,” he added. “This is the start of it becoming more than just that.”

Stewart touts the “top-notch” team working at Tree of Life — from Rothschild Doyno Collaborative, a Strip District design firm, to general contractor P.J. Dick, a national firm with offices on Pittsburgh’s North Shore.

Sometimes, when building a shopping center, Stewart said he can debate the cost of things like flooring.

“You don’t do that for a building designed by Daniel Libeskind,” he laughed. “He has designed a jewel box. It requires a different level of care and feeling and respect.”

A measured pace

The nonprofit group Tree of Life, which Zawatsky leads, was launched in 2022 to rebuild the congregations’ campus at the corner of Wilkins and Shady avenues, though the recognizable beige edifice at the intersection will remain.

A design for the site’s memorial was unveiled in December. Nonprofit officials feel that the re-envisioned Tree of Life building will allow for public and communal reflection.

When it comes to the measured pace of rebuilding, Jeff Solomon gets it.

Today the Squirrel Hill-bred president of a Manhattan-based investment bank keeps close to his childhood home. He celebrated his bar mitzvah at Tree of Life in 1979. His parents continue to attend services there.

“There’s deep commitment to the project from some significant institutions, both in Pittsburgh and nationally,” said Solomon, 57, who chairs the Jewish’s community massive capital campaign for the site. “Nobody on the committee that’s governing this is willing to have this go any faster than it should go.

“And I think that’s deeply compassionate and appropriate.”

Staff writer Ryan Deto contributed to this report.