Seven years have passed since that tragic date whose transcription in American English looks like the phone number to call in an emergency: 9/11. As a social services employee at the Federation of Employment and Guidance Services (FEGS) for almost three years, I helped those who lost their jobs, housing, business or health after the terrorist attacks.
An elderly couple lost their only son. Well, how could they really be helped? Well, money, a new apartment so that they would not have to live any longer in the apartment on the same landing as their son’s apartment. I cried with them more than anything. But NYLAG lawyers led by Irina Matiychenko fought so that America would grant their daughter and her family in Israel green cards. And they succeeded. Now that is invaluable.
During those days, social services were caught in completely unfamiliar working conditions with unfamiliar clients. It’s always a constant stream of drug addicts, ex-convicts, alcoholics and the chronically unemployed. And here were tens of thousands looking for help who were previously prospering bankers, architects, programmers, writers, artists, designers, photographers, dance teachers.
They did not know what door to knock on, and social services did not know what to do with them. Even special emergency aid agencies (FEMA, Safe Horizon, the American Red Cross) were initially at a loss: after all they are oriented towards helping victims of natural disasters. Even people with 30 years experience were at a loss and did not know what steps to take. And a dark wave of human grief rose higher and higher and engulfed us.
Nevertheless, the sluggish bureaucratic machine made a 180-degree turn and began to take action in an incredibly short time. Agencies developed forms to register victims to get at least a rough idea of how many there were and what they needed. They started offering financial aid. FEMA paid for apartments for a year-and-a-half, the American Red Cross distributed a sizable amount of money, and the remaining agencies paid bills. Radically new organizations appeared. Especially of note are Unmet Needs Round Table – a round table uniting many religious philanthropic groups and Saint Francis of Assisi Foundation, the largest Catholic organization. They resettled the homeless. They fed people. There are hundreds of soup kitchens in our city, but respectable people wouldn’t enter some of them, even though there were times when they were fainting from hunger. I saw people like that. They treated people and helped them with insurance.
Fortunately, psychologists and psychotherapists from countries all over the world worked at the Federation of Employment and Guidance Services clinic. I had one client, Giuseppe, a chef from Palermo, Sicily, who didn’t even know two words of English. We found a wonderful young doctor from Palermo working at the clinic. She pulled him out of a terrible depression, and half-a-year later he was already working at a kosher Italian restaurant.
The Russian-speaking psychotherapist at FEGS, Anna Khalbershtadt organized group sessions with support from the Council of Jewish Émigré Community Organizations (COJECO) for war veterans, Holocaust prisoners, and invalids. Their stress triggered a return of old psychological wounds. That is the first time that I saw the real power of group therapy, which we only heard about in the USSR.
We ourselves needed psychological help. The most helpful were Israeli psychologists, who have a great deal of experience in treating victims of terrorist attacks, particularly Professor Yael Danieli, the best specialist in the world on post-traumatic stress disorder. I started having a foolish phobia: I read somewhere that terrorists could set off an explosion in Manhattan’s subway and since then I kept looking around to see if the waters of the ocean were gushing over the tracks. To add to that, on the walls of the subway station at Houston Street, some post-modernist had placed the following artistic mosaic. I won the battle with my own imagination and fear only with Yael’s help.
My dear managers and colleagues from countries all over the world who gathered together at Federation of Employment and Guidance Services clinic to help multilingual group of clients, it is only thanks to our friendship that we survived a common tragedy and, as a group, were victorious! Roy, Ellen, Dayanara, Mila, Ira, Judy, Tonanzin, Onichi, Freya, Pat, and everyone who I worked with on the 9/11 Recovery Project, you are always with me – today, seven years from now, in whatever time is left to me.
I also remember the clients – each of the 200 people I cared for. I have never in my life felt myself so needed.
Mark K., a photographer living on Murray Street ran out on the street with his camera when he heard an explosion. He took pictures for six days and six nights. He called his photography exhibition Kaddish – the mourner’s prayer, a prayer for the souls who turned to smoke and ash half-a-century after the concentration camp furnaces of WWII. He moved to New Mexico a year later. Recently I saw Mark’s gift at a synagogue near Canal Street – two wall hangings with golden lions.
Tomislav H. is a screenwriter. On September 10, 2001 his screenplay about the tragedy Jews suffered in Argentina in the 1970s was accepted for production. His contract was cancelled on September 12. Tom suffered from lung cancer and he had gone through a divorce. Group therapy also helped him. At Federation of Employment and Guidance Services we organized the Artist Support Group, and over 30 clients are thankful to us for this idea. Tom now works as a sports agent and looks for soccer players all over the world. It looks like (knock on wood) someone is interested in his screenplay.
John A., a Merrill Lynch employee, could not bear the oppression of memories and moved to Connecticut. He wrote me, “I ride my bike to work through the forest. I laugh like a boy and am not looking up into the sky in expectation of another strike.”
For Lucille, a designer, things are still not great for her, as they are not for many of those who lived through 9/11 and the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993.
There is probably not enough room on the pages of a newspaper for my story about each of 200 fates. Maybe it’s not needed, as long as they have enough room in this world.
What conclusions have I formed? Aside from gratitude to those who I was lucky to work with and endless sympathy for those who sought help, I feel only consuming hatred for terrorists. My prayer is not only the Kaddish, but also godless, “Curse you!”
