Each year in late October, as fall starts to turn a bit grayer, the feeling shifts for many people who are connected to Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue.

“It’s a day that you know is coming,” said Barb Feige, executive director of the Tree of Life congregation. “It’s not like we don’t think about the folks every other day of the year, but this is, like all anniversaries, where memories of different kinds of things come up.”

On Oct. 27, 2018, a gunman stormed into the Wilkins Avenue synagogue in Squirrel Hill and killed 11 worshippers in the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history. Federal prosecutors charged Robert Bowers, then 46, of Baldwin. He awaits trial.

The synagogue had housed the Tree of Life-Or L’Simcha, Dor Hadash and New Light congregations. All three lost members in the attack.

Feige said the tragedy “feels like yesterday and it feels like forever ago.”

Four police officers were wounded exchanging gunfire with the alleged shooter, and two other congregants were wounded. Among them was Andrea Wedner, whose mother, Rose Mallinger, was killed in the shooting.

“It helps to be with people,” Wedner said Wednesday outside the synagogue.

It helps to talk, too, she said.

“We just can’t forget what happened here, and the story needs to be told, and if I can tell it —,” she said, her voice trailing off.

“It seems like yesterday. I remember like it’s yesterday,” she said. “I remember each year that we have these commemorations. I think about it every day, but every year it it comes, it’s emotional.”

The services and the memorials bring with them fresh feelings, she said, but being with others has helped.

“I get cards every year from people,” Wedner said. “My phone’s been dinging all morning. It makes me feel good. It makes me know that they’re thinking of this day and they’re thinking of my mother and they’re thinking of me. I only see good in that.”

Feige also said gestures like that bring comfort.

“What is most touching here sometimes is strangers – non-Jewish community members, some from out of state from I-don’t-know-where, who come here,” she said. “They do that for their own healing, but it also helps us.”

She said the outpouring of support in the days after Oct. 27, 2018, and in the years since “has been tremendous.”

“I don’t think people realize how helpful that is — the kind word, the Facebook post, the comment on Twitter,” she said.

Feige, like Wedner, said the congregation still receives cards, letters and other tokens of love and support. It all helps, she said.

“Everybody – the entire community, including the three congregations – is still healing,” she said. “And healing isn’t a straight line. It’s more ups and downs and backwards. For different people, it has different impacts.”

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