On being a survivor: lessons of 9-11-01
By William E. Lee, '96
Lawrence Today magazine, Spring 2002
Years from now, when I visit New York City with my children, I will take them to my old office in Rector Street, a block and a half south of the World Trade Center, and I will try to tell them what it was like on the morning of September 11, 2001. No doubt they will have seen countless images of the attacks, studied them in history class, and watched the construction of the buildings and monuments that will replace the towers. Hopefully, by that time we will have a wider context for September 11. We will have learned more about the underlying causes of the attacks, as well as their execution. The first evidence of their lasting effects, from global politics to local security, will have emerged.
To these broadened perspectives, I will add my firsthand account in an effort to give my children an idea of how the events of the day unfolded through my eyes. I doubt that any of this will explain to their satisfaction why a handful of zealots so carefully planned and carried out the murder of thousands of innocent people. If they are old enough, I will explain to them the work I was doing on September 11 and how it took that unthinkable day to deepen my understanding of one of the most unfathomable events of all time, the Holocaust.
Rector Street is the home of the New York State Banking Department, where I work for the Holocaust Claims Processing Office (HCPO). Founded in 1997 by Governor George Pataki, the HCPO assists Holocaust survivors and their heirs in reclaiming bank accounts, insurance policies, and art stolen or confiscated as a result of Nazi persecution. We help claimants locate documentary evidence of their original ownership of assets, as well as proof of wartime theft. The HCPO then presents claims to appropriate bodies, which include class-action settlements, omnibus adjudicative organizations, and individual museums and companies.
One of the tragic privileges of the HCPO's work is the opportunity to become acquainted with those who perished in the Holocaust through the loving recollections of those who survived. Simply and directly, the correspondence and photographs shared by claimants transcend the anonymity often inherent in the epic scale of Nazi genocide, reminding us that the Holocaust claimed not simply millions, but millions of individuals. In turn, one begins to understand that every person lost represents several unfillable holes in the lives of sons, daughters, wives, husbands, fathers, and mothers who survived. The sight of an engagement ring in a Nazi property inventory, which served as a blueprint for confiscation as well as the assessment of punitive taxes, is moving enough, but it becomes utterly heartbreaking after listening to the woman on whose hand it rightfully belongs speak fondly of a long-murdered husband.
Such close contact with those affected by the Holocaust, however, even when combined with half a century of scholarly analysis, can only provide us with a dimly refracted version of the event itself. Before September 11, this lessened my ability to comprehend some of the actions of our claimants.
For example, before fleeing Germany in 1940, one family elected to leave the property that constitutes their claim with a man who held a position of leadership in their synagogue. I found it difficult to imagine how, in 1940, with the Nazis in undeniable ascendance, one would choose such an obvious target as a custodian.
And yet, I found it equally difficult to explain the absolute and transfixing power of the sight of the stricken towers to those who asked, quite rightly, "Why didn't you immediately run for your lives?" We certainly had ample warning. Perhaps three minutes after the first crash, a colleague who lives in TriBeCa and walks to work called from just north of the Trade Center, distraught and frightened, to say that she had seen a plane hit one of the towers. Likewise, local public radio, broadcasting from the Municipal Building, a stone's throw from the Trade Center, reported the crash almost immediately.
Nonetheless, I went down to see for myself. The street was slightly more crowded than usual, but there was no panic, and little noise. Thick, black smoke billowing furiously out of the north tower obscured the top of the south tower. How awful, I thought, that's at least eight or ten floors of people dead or injured before the fire is contained. Riveted, I walked a block north, scarcely aware that I was moving, let alone moving closer to danger. For perhaps three minutes I watched, unbelieving, as thickening plumes of paper-flecked smoke streamed across the platinum facade of the south tower.
Before going downstairs, I had called my parents in Oregon to tell them that they would soon be hearing of the plane crash and to assure them that we were fine. Luckily, this meant that they were watching the news when the second plane hit, about 30 seconds after I returned to the office. I raced back to the street, now crammed with shouting, dumbstruck onlookers gaping in horror at the jagged, flaming maw left in the south tower by the second plane. Dingy streaks of jet fuel seeped down the facade, like blood from a split lip, as flaming clouds of smoke boiled from the chasm.
Although the giddy exhilaration of shock had begun to set in, I still felt no great impulse to flee. Nor had we received any instructions to leave the building. Energized and focused, it nevertheless felt as if we were trying to swim through corn syrup. My parents phoned back. If we hadn't yet made the leap to terrorism, they certainly had.
"We're being attacked!" they shouted. I said I doubted it, but wasn't it odd that there were two crashes? I mean really, what kind of pilots fly not one, but two planes into the tallest buildings in Manhattan? "No! This is terrorism! You are in danger! You need to leave now!"
At first, it seemed strange that the voice of reason and caution arrived from 3,000 miles away. Slowly, however, I came to realize that the family who left their property with a synagogue leader would probably be similarly confused at my suspicion of their actions. We both reacted to developing events as best we could. Jewish community leaders often occupied elevated positions in Nazi-imposed ghetto government and sometimes did succeed in protecting property. The family could no more have predicted that the Nazis would crush this remaining Jewish autonomy than we could imagine that the towers were about to collapse.
Indeed, it took the fall of the first tower to break the spell of shock and reveal the true gravity of our circumstances. The eight of us in the office left en masse, planning to head toward the East River and then make our way north. As we began moving slowly east on Rector Street through the throng, our progress was slowed not by panic or mayhem but by the difficulty of walking and looking at the towers at the same time. We would take a few steps, stop, look up, take a few more steps, and stop, unable to look away. Giant pieces of aluminum cladding turned graceful arcs as they fell from the building, looking more like giant butterflies than hurtling metal. Smaller objects plummeted straight down through the cascades of debris. Mercifully, we were too far away to realize what the falling shapes were.
About eight minutes later, we reached Maiden Lane, several blocks directly east of the towers. Turning the corner, all of us looked west and froze at the sight of the mortally wounded towers, visible in nearly full view for the first time. Perhaps two seconds later there was a sickening crack, and the top of the south tower shifted, dipped, and then disappeared straight down into a huge plume of smoke and dust. In the moment before the street erupted in screams, the only sound was a low rumble, more felt than heard, punctuated by a faint tinkling sound, which I realized later was the shattering of thousands of windows.
"Oh god, oh god god, it's falling, it's falling, it's falling!" I screamed. I glanced at one of my benumbed colleagues, only to see her staring with a look of total confusion at the apocalyptic cloud where the tower stood a moment before. "No," she said, "no, it's not." The dust cloud began to boil down the streets, swallowing people who had started running too late.
My memory flashed to standing on a hill as a child watching Mt. St. Helens erupt, and I began to back up. I looked at my colleague, still staring in wonderment at the cloud. The sight seemed to carry the power of Medusa, turning her to stone midstride. "It's time to run! We need to run now!" "No," she said again, "no, what do you mean, run?" Behind her I could see the onrush of hundreds of people at a dead sprint. We could be killed, I thought; this is how people die in riots. "We need to run, or we'll be trampled!" I yelled.
We ran. Past people who had fallen. Around discarded bags and shoes. Through people pushing others out of the way. And at one point -- for me at least -- smack into a bench. After passing the South Street Seaport we slowed to a jog, then a fast walk. Every few steps we looked back anxiously to watch the ominous progress of the cloud. The financial district disappeared, followed by the Brooklyn Bridge and then Brooklyn itself. We had a few ragged, excited, and largely irrational conversations, but for the most part, we just stumbled north.
Our progress slowed only when we reached another eerily perfect vantage point just in time to see the second tower disintegrate. We arrived at a colleague's East Village apartment around noon, powered by fear and adrenaline that would keep most of us from sleeping for the next week, in spite of utter exhaustion. I spent some of those sleepless hours marveling at how long it had taken us to act on the fact that we were in great danger. Like many of our claimants, we had taken a sort of middle path, not leaving at the earliest and most prudent opportunity but fighting through shock and disbelief to escape in time to avoid serious harm.
Indeed, the fact that I had been so close to the day's terrible events and yet emerged alive and intact taught me something about the power of survivor guilt. For several weeks I found it difficult to smile or laugh or relax at all without lapsing into grief for those who would never again be able to enjoy such simple pleasures. One of the most important lessons I've learned from claimants who lived through events entire orders of magnitude more horrifying, however, is that life, and joy, can and must flower again. Survivors who have lived most fully after the Holocaust have found ways to make room for hope, ambition, and happiness, as well as grief and remembrance.
I feel immensely privileged to follow such an example. And even though my heart will break anew when I walk in lower Manhattan with my kids, I am sure some of the tears I cry that day will come from the joy of being alive to love them and be loved by them.