What remains of America’s 9/11 memory - and what is disappearing

History, as Israelis know all too well from our own challenged historical accounts, is fungible. As politics change and stories pass from one generation to the next, and feelings are considered, even the basic facts can be reinterpreted. The story of 9/11 is no different.

And while September 11 is not being scrubbed from the record, demography, schoolhouse inconsistency, partisan fights over marking the anniversary, and a shift in public language all point to fading lived memory – and, in some institutions, a softer or redirected story. Memorials still stand, names are still read, and most adults still say the day remade the country. What has changed is the kind of memory. In some circles, the retelling of the event has shifted from shared shock to contested history. 

The initial reason 9/11 may feel different 25 years later is because of who is alive to remember it. More than 100 million Americans were born after 2001 or were too young to form a memory of that morning. 

History vs lived experience

“We’re teaching a generation of students now for whom 9/11 is history, and for some, it’s ancient history like the Vietnam War or the Korean War or World War II,” Joshua Rovner, an associate professor of foreign policy and global security at American University’s School of International Service in Washington, who has taught courses on 9/11 since 2001, said in USA Today in September 2025.

YouGov, a British-founded public-opinion and market-research firm that runs online polls, conducted an August 2026 survey of 1,098 US adults and found that 46% first learned of 9/11 from the news – but among 18- to 29-year-olds, 37% learned it in school, and 6% said they had not heard anything about it. Older Americans still carry “where I was” memories. Younger ones often do not. For many, it is an annual date, not a constant presence.

Politics and war have taken a toll on 9/11 memories. The attacks are now bound up with two long wars, trillions of dollars, thousands of soldiers dead, and security that was never totally achieved. Pew’s 2021 review found 69% saying the US mostly failed to achieve its goals in Afghanistan. A Washington Post-ABC poll that same anniversary year found more Americans saying 9/11 changed the country for the worse (46% ) than for the better (33% ). The brief post-attack unity, “trust in government at 60% in October 2001,” per Pew, collapsed to 24% by 2021. 

On the 20th anniversary of 9/11, Newsweek quoted University of Florida political scientist Stephen Craig. “Today, 9/11 is ‘a source of substantial political tensions,’ not the rally it was when [president George] Bush hit ~90% approval,” Craig said. “The post-9/11 ‘rally round the flag’ was short; the longer polarization predates and outlasted it.”

Schools have not filled the gap with a national story. There is no uniform curriculum assigned to teach about 9/11. Only 14 states, including New York, Texas, Illinois, and California, explicitly require September 11 in social-studies standards. In the other 36, the topic is discretionary – left to districts and teachers. An article by Jeremy Stoddard and Diana Hess, professors at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in The Conversation’s September 2021 issue, describes an “anniversary-only” pattern.

“Teaching 9/11 as a memorializing event on the anniversary also generally avoids deeper inquiry into the historic US role in the Middle East and Afghanistan. This includes, for example, arming mujahedeen fighters against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s and aiding Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in the war against Iran also in the ’80s.”

They suggest teachers take a more “in-depth approach to explore how US actions contributed to the formation of al-Qaeda, which bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 and later carried out attacks on US embassies in East Africa as well as on the USS Cole, a Navy ship fueling in Yemen, in the years leading up to 9/11.”

In some schools, 9/11 lessons have taken a progressive spin, tilting towards Islamophobia, the Patriot Act, and American foreign-policy guilt. The result is inconsistency – and a vacuum in which conspiracy content and social-media fragments can stand in for a shared account.

Changed media reporting

Anniversary journalism in 2026 illustrates the same split over emphasis. While most high-profile news still calls 9/11 a terrorist attack and still cites the death toll, a smaller set of prominent pieces treats the attacks mainly as the opening of a story about Muslims, surveillance, and civil liberties.

Asma Khalid’s August 18 Atlantic essay, “Islamophobia has corroded American values,” links the 25th anniversary to America’s 250th and moves quickly from 2,977 dead to the Transportation Security Administration, watchlists, and current anti-Muslim rhetoric. PBS NewsHour’s September 1 “Settle In” episode with Rozina Ali, timed to the anniversary, centers on the FBI and post-9/11 surveillance of Muslim families. 

The Washington Post reported on August 28 that Canada’s CBC had a policy of not labeling specific attacks as terrorism and made an exception for 9/11 only after public criticism. USA Today’s Susan Page package still named 9/11 the worst terrorist attack in US history, then devoted a major section to liberty versus security – the Patriot Act, Section 702, Snowden. 

The New York Daily News asked whether the country is safer and quoted critics of a sprawling surveillance architecture. CNN’s coverage of the fight over Mayor Zohran Mamdani at Ground Zero put families’ objections beside the mayor’s account of post-9/11 surveillance of Arab American communities. While none of these pieces deny the dead, some “soft-soap” the language, referencing “those who lost their lives” versus “those who were killed.” Several relocate the moral center of the anniversary from the hijackings to the response.

Agreement that the day mattered does not produce agreement about how to mark it. Thirteen percent of Democrats said Americans focus too much on 9/11; 43% of Republicans said the country focuses too little. Republicans backed a national 9/11 holiday 62-43 over Democrats. Democrats said Muslims have been treated worse than people of other religions since 9/11 by 72-28 over Republicans.

Threat perception has cooled even while the “changed us completely” number holds. Gallup’s October 2025 crime poll finds Americans worry about identity theft (69%) and scams (53%), while 41% of parents in August 2025 feared for a child’s safety at school, numbers well above the 36% who in 2021 said they worried about becoming a terror victim (down from 58% recorded in a Gallup flash poll on the night of September 11, 2001) and unlike fall 2001, when nearly half said they were less likely to fly and about a third were less willing to enter skyscrapers or large crowds.

Language and media play a huge part in how this story is told. Commemorative and official speech often prefers “lost their lives,” “died,” or “lives were stolen” to “killed in attacks.” King Charles and Queen Camilla’s April 2026 note at the New York memorial, as quoted by the BBC, read: “We honour the memory for those who so tragically lost their lives on 11th September 2001. We stand in enduring solidarity with the American people and in the face of their profound loss.” Mamdani, quoted in USA Today’s August 25 identification story, said, “We honor the nearly 3,000 people whose lives were stolen that day.” 

Memorial English is not a conspiracy, but over time, using only the softer verbs, plus curricula that skip perpetrators and ideology, can leave students with tragedy without agency: a disaster that “happened,” not an attack that was planned.

Outsourcing memory

So, the accurate charge is not that America has erased 9/11; it is that the country is outsourcing memory to an anniversary ritual while arguing over the caption. The dead are still named. The towers have been rebuilt. What is at risk is the harder sentence: that nearly 3,000 people were murdered in a terrorist attack by al-Qaeda, that the ideology did not vanish, and that remembering the victims and ensuring that America remains vigilant and secure are lessons we can’t afford to forget, erase, or hijack with conspiracy theories.

What is worthy of a school assembly in September, what gets a curriculum unit on wars and the dangers of unchecked and well-funded terror, and which verb a generation hears first – that’s what will keep the memory intact. As will telling our personal memories, which you, our readers, have shared to help preserve the history of that infamous day.

The writer’s memories of that tragic day: America must never forget

Tears streaming down our faces, my friend Anita and I met at the supermarket in Dobbs Ferry, New York. Food shopping seemed like the logical thing to do on a bright September morning with the sky so blue it looked like a painting and your world was falling apart.

The only planes overhead were teams of fighter jets – an unlikely sight in the Westchester suburb north of Manhattan. We shopped as though we were expecting a winter storm, but in truth we didn’t know what we were expecting. Communications were down – we couldn’t reach our husbands who worked in lower Manhattan by phone, and we were worried.

Anita’s husband worked on Wall Street near the Trade Center. Mine was an accountant at St. Vincent’s hospital. The newscasters on TV and radio were no help, being at a loss for putting the news puzzle together. We only knew that it appeared someone was attacking America using large jetliners as missiles.

At first it seemed like an accident – a plane somehow flew into a building, but by the time the second Trade Center building had been struck, it was clearly something more. The building of the World Trade Center, where I had once worked on the 62nd floor in the New York State Tax Department, was burning top-down like a cigarette.

Were our husbands alive? Were we to be the next target?

I filled my tank with gas in case I needed to drive to Canada with the two younger children. I spent time saying Psalms. It soothed my soul just enough to try and think clearly. My eldest son, at Yeshiva University High School in Manhattan, managed to get an open line. He told me he was stuck in New York. Public transportation, trains, buses, everything had stopped. Cars were gridlocked. Ash was blowing across the East River and into the Hudson, and as we watched, the news went from horrific to horrendous.

The first building came down, shooting debris through the streets, sending chunks of building into revolving doors of lower Manhattan, trapping my brother and many others in buildings nearby and covering everyone within miles with ash. Firefighters stood helplessly at the scene.

Like most news stories, the attacks on 9/11 unfolded in layers. Layers that affected every person in the US. But especially those of us in New York. Life simply stopped.

My ex-husband got stuck overnight on emergency duty in the hospital, an accountant on emergency duty, waiting for victims of the mass casualty, victims that never came. We were scheduled to sell our house – the closing set for September 13. The buyer, Rodolfo (Rudy) Hermano, was the catering manager for Windows on the World, the famous restaurant on top of Tower One.

It took a day or two to get the courage (and the phone lines) to call our lawyer. How does one even ask the question – did our buyer survive the blast that killed approximately 170 staff and patrons reported to be in the restaurant that day? His story is below.

On Friday, I baked challah and brought some to the shiva home of Rena Speisman, the mom of Hayley, who was in my son’s class. Her husband, Bob, a 48-year-old diamond industry executive, was a passenger aboard American Airlines Flight 77, the hijacked aircraft that was flown into the Pentagon.

While I was not directly affected, there were very few degrees of separation for my family from the tragedy that hit America just 23 miles down the Hudson from where we lived. My school chum Devorah suffered the loss of her uncle Abraham Zelmanowitz, known by the family as Avreymel.

Although he worked in the North Tower on Floor 27 for Blue Cross/Blue Shield and could have made it out alive with the rest of his colleagues, he chose to stay behind and try to help his co-worker and friend Ed Beyea, a paraplegic confined to a wheelchair. He sent Ed’s aide Irma Fuller out of the building to safety and assumed his care. FDNY Capt. William Francis Burke Jr. stayed to try to help the men in the stairwell, but the three men perished together when the building collapsed.

Abe Zelmanowitz’s DNA was identified in August 2002 – almost a year after 9/11. I attended the funeral on August 5, 2002. The casket, covered by a small parochet, was the size of a shoebox. Avreymel was buried in the Mount of Olives Jewish Cemetery, near his parents’ graves.

This selfless man, Avreymal Zelmanowitz is just one of so many who are being remembered on this 25th anniversary.

The morning the windows went dark: Rudy’s story

Rodolfo “Rudy” Hermano and his wife, Cathy, both worked busy jobs in hospitality. Rudy was in catering sales at Windows on the World, the acclaimed restaurant on floors 106 and 107 of the World Trade Center. Cathy was assistant director of catering at Hilton New York.

Parents of two young children, the dual-career couple had a “commuter date” each morning on the 6 a.m. Metro-North train from Irvington to Grand Central Station, where they caught up on events of the week. But on September 11, 2001, Rudy – usually perpetually early – was late.

He skipped the commute that would have put him on the 107th floor with his catering team and drove instead, planning to visit his mother in a Brooklyn hospital after work.

Jackie Sayegh, a bubbly colleague one desk away, used to tease him: “Rudy, this is not a hotel. Stop coming early.” That day she came in early anyway, so she could take Friday off to see her new husband in Atlanta.

Driving down the West Side Highway, Rudy reached the 168th Street exit when traffic stopped dead, and cars were forced off the road. Only emergency vehicles were waved through. He pulled into a neighborhood coffee shop and stood at the counter as a television behind it showed the first tower fall.

“To my left was a postman,” Rudy recalls. “He was in uniform, and I was in a suit. People were dressed casually, and I wasn’t. Then when I saw the towers on fire, and the first one collapsed, the man looked me up and down and said, ‘Do you know anyone there?’ And I said, ‘That’s where I work. Up there.’ The postman just looked at me with big eyes, and I really didn’t know what to say. We were buying a house. Did I still have a job?”

He tried to reach Cathy, who had taken their usual train, and left a voicemail she saved until very recently: “Something’s happening in the World Trade Center. I’m listening to 1010 WINS news. Airplane hit. I’m calling the office, it’s busy. It must be my building. I am not there.”

Hermano had been at Windows only about 10 months.

“The office was a family,” he said in a recent interview with the Magazine. Jennie Emil – whose brother David’s company, Night Sky, operated Windows and other restaurants – was not there that day. Jay Magazine, the catering sales manager, had booked that morning’s risk management client seminar for 100 attendees and was upstairs. An NYU nutrition intern, Orasri Liangthanasarn, newly hired as a second assistant, had come in early to catch up on her work. The captain, banquet manager Jupiter Yambem, and two or three servers were on the floor. 

“Within our catering family, Jay, Jackie, Orasri, Jupiter, our servers, and so many others did not make it out. They were among some 75 staff who were trapped.”

A YouTube video, “Windows on the World, 9/11 Untold Story,” tells the behind-the-scenes story of that day. According to the video, around 8,000 people were inside the North Tower when the plane struck. The vast majority managed to escape, but not the 1,344 people above the impact zone.

Ken Womack, author of The Restaurant at the End of the World, said, “One of the great miracles of 9/11 is how many people survived and were able to get out of the Trade Center. But that wasn’t the case if you were on the 92nd floor or above in the North Tower. During the initial attack, sheetrock and other wreckage collapsed in the stairwells, virtually cutting them off.”

In one heartbreaking scene in the video, using real audio from that day, assistant general manager Christine Olendar begs the police for help. “What are we going to do for air?” she cries. The police assured her help was on the way. It wasn’t.

According to Rudy, within a week the small group of Windows on the World survivors gathered at Jennie’s apartment and hugged everyone who walked in the door. Rudy went to memorials and house prayers for immigrant families he had barely had time to know.

Greg Hein, who had referred Rudy for the job and was director of catering, was on his way in. When he came up from the subway into the concourse, people were running out, shouting, “Go out!” He didn’t know what was happening. He ran outside, looked up, saw the fire – and then the explosion as the second plane hit. Debris came down. He ran across the street to St. Peter’s [church] and huddled by the fence with his briefcase over his head, watching pieces of the aircraft fall around him.

He kept going back to Ground Zero to help. The dust wrecked his lungs. He died two years ago of those breathing complications. He was younger than Rudy.

“Fortunately, within a few months, I was working again,” Rudy recalls. “At the time, if you remember, the world stopped. There were no jobs in New York. I was lucky. In January, I bumped into an executive chef at the Regency I used to work with. He said, ‘So what are you doing?’ I said, ‘I really don’t know.’ Then he said, ‘I’m going to arrange for you to work with us at the Marriott in Stamford.’”

The Hermanos are moving again – this time to Santa Fe. Before Rudy left New York, he extended his stay for a reunion on September 11 with the surviving catering staff of Windows on the World. Twenty-five years later.

The ‘Magazine’ shares: Where were YOU when America was attacked?

No matter what country they lived in, people who lived through September 11, 2001, have deep and disturbing memories of exactly where they were and what they were doing on that crisp, beautiful morning when America was attacked.

Jennifer Abrahamsen, teacher, Sloatsburg, New York:

“I left school on my prep period to make a deposit at the bank. When I got to the bank, there was video of the towers burning on the television screen. I returned to school, and nobody in the building knew what was happening. You would be surprised how cut off from the outside world schools can be. I told the women in the main office what I had seen on TV. A television was turned on in the school library.

More and more teachers found out, and finally children of parents who worked in the Trade Center were called individually to the guidance office, and a family member was located to bring them home. Once all of those students were with family, an announcement was finally made during the last period of the day to tell the students about the attack on the World Trade Center. The principal at the time likened it to when US president John F. Kennedy was shot (on November 22, 1963).

One of my eighth-grade students raised his hand at the end of the announcement and told me he was scheduled to be at a party at Windows on the World that weekend. He asked if there would still be a party.”

Major “A.” in the IDF combat reserves, drafted since Oct. 7 (aliyah in 1984):

“I was working in Rochester, New York, at a tech firm, sitting at my desk. Every single person in the office got up from their desk and went into the break room to watch it on television. I saw it was a terrorist attack, watched for about 15 minutes, and went back to work. Because as an Israeli and an IDF veteran, I knew the only way to deal with terrorism on a community level is to clean up and get back to work; otherwise, the entire society is permanently paralyzed in trauma.

Meanwhile, for the next several months, people came to work and watched television all day long and didn’t get anything done; then they would rush home and sit in front of the television and watch… Exactly the opposite of what we are trained to do here in Israel. I ended up having to do the jobs of most of my coworkers while they sat in the break room all day long for months on end. They were frozen and addicted to witnessing the trauma over and over again. This is why we Israelis continue to thrive despite the horrific things that our enemies do to us.

Rachelle Ben David, Karnei Shomron resident (aliyah in 1982):

“I had been teaching in Kedumim, and when I got home, my friend called me and told me to turn on the TV. I watched as the second plane flew into the World Trade Center Tower. I knew people who lost friends and neighbors in the towers. A friend I taught with in Kedumim had a brother who was in the towers on the 70th floor when he heard a boom. Being Israeli, as soon as he heard a boom, he ran for the stairwell and flew down all the stairs. He survived.”

Edna Krausz, Jerusalem (aliyah in 2025)

“I had no idea anything had happened at 9:30 a.m. on September 11. Before opening my gift store in New Rochelle/Scarsdale, New York, I ran to grab a coffee at Starbucks. The grim faces around me told the story that was unfolding on the radio, and I listened with horror to what was transpiring. As I opened my shop, Inspiration Gallery, suddenly streams of people came through the door – apparently looking for inspiration… and hugs.”

Edna summarized, saying she gave out a lot of hugs that day. “It was solid comfort,” she continued. “I was amazed at how people reach out to other people. We don’t know what to do – so we seek God’s comfort in whichever way we can get it.”

She recalled, “A friend of mine had a daughter working on a high floor in the towers. The employees were told to stay in place. This girl, Lisa, said, no. She was familiar with terrorism and had been in the building during the first World Trade Center bombing. She ran for the stairwell and made her way out. I believe that people like this were getting a message. God communicated directly to their souls. As we say each day in the Amida (silent prayer) – ‘You grant our soul knowledge.’”

Elaine Strasberg, Karnei Shomron (aliyah in 2013):

“Tuesday morning, heading to my Israeli dance class on the Lower East Side, I was driving into Manhattan from Queens, going over the Williamsburg Bridge at 8:45 a.m., listening to the Nachum Segal music show on the radio. Traffic was exceptionally slow. When the program ended at 9 a.m., I switched to the WINS news station and heard about an explosion at one of the Twin Towers. I looked out the window and saw the smoke coming out of the tower. As I kept listening to the theories of what was happening, I saw the second plane hit the second tower!

Then I understood why traffic was hardly moving. We were not allowed to enter Manhattan and were diverted back into Brooklyn. When I got home and turned on the TV, I saw the collapse of the second tower. Of course, we stayed glued to the TV, hearing of the Pentagon and the plane crash in Pennsylvania.

My friends who had already gotten into Manhattan for the class were stuck there for the entire day and didn’t get home until late that night.”

Nahum Zak, Boca Raton, Florida:

“I was at the post office in Kew Gardens Hills, New York City, picking up the Palm Pilot I bought on eBay when I heard the radio report behind the teller saying a small plane (that was the first report) flew into one of the towers. The teller and reports seemed to think it was an accident.

“I remember thinking there’s no way someone flies by accident over NYC airspace into the No. 1 terrorist target in the state.

“It was the worst day of my life.

Yael Harris Resnick, Karnei Shomron (aliyah in 2013):

“Everyone has their own memories of that tragic day 25 years ago. Mine started early that morning around 6:45 a.m. when I woke up to my own tower falling, an eerie foreboding of what was about to happen in NYC about two hours later. I was very newly pregnant with my first baby, and I was bleeding. A lot.

“It was also my first day as a kindergarten teacher in New Jersey, just across the bridge from NYC, in a new school. There were kids counting on me. Little did I know at the time just how much they would need the loving support of their teachers. I put my own dread aside and promised that as soon as my obstetrician’s office opened, I would call to make an emergency appointment.

“You know how the rest of the day went for NYC and the world. I don’t need to describe the horror, the confusion, the relief, the pain. Despite the urgency of global catastrophe, personal catastrophes do not cease to exist. It was difficult due to traffic jams and the chaos of the day, but I managed to be squeezed in for an appointment. It was my first. The one where they check for a heartbeat. Miraculously, there was one. There was also one extra sac that was empty. No heartbeat. One tower down.

“I cannot describe the emotions of a moment like that. Lumped together with that devastating day, all I could do was be thankful, so thankful for that one strong little heartbeat fluttering inside me.

“Twenty-five years later, that little heartbeat has grown into a beautiful young lady. This summer she married the love of her life and was the most beautiful bride. It can’t be a coincidence that she is obsessively connected to all things 9/11 (especially the musical Come from Away) even though she hadn’t yet been born. And that she is now studying on the mother/baby and ultrasound ward at Shaare Zedek hospital to be a nurse, a gentle, old soul, present and nurturing when mothers receive news just like I did on that September 11, 25 years ago.”

Tsivya Fox-Dobuler, Ramat Beit Shemesh (aliyah in 2002):

“We lived in Far Rockaway, Queens. My ex-husband was on a train heading into Manhattan when he saw the first plane hit the Twin Towers. After years in Israel, he knew instantly it was terror, not an accident, so he got off, crossed the platform, and came straight home.

“I was teaching five-year-old boys at yeshiva that morning. My assistant walked in late and white as a ghost; a few minutes later the vice principal canceled playground on the most beautiful day of the year. I still didn’t understand until Mrs. Katz, whose kohanim sons were members of Hatzalah, looked like she’d seen death itself. After school I walked to the bay in Bayswater. People were lined up watching the towers burning in the distance, and Israelis who had lived nearby for years were suddenly saying they wanted to go home to Israel.

“The silence for weeks afterwards was almost worse. We lived 15 minutes from JFK Airport; for five days no civilian planes moved, only F-16s circling. My ex-husband had always said one day we would want to leave America and wouldn’t be able to. That week we believed him. A week later, we walked through Ground Zero. Clothes in a Gap store were still perfectly folded under thick ash. The smoke rose in straight pillars for months.

“A neighbor was saved because her elderly father, who never asked her to stay home, begged her not to go to work that morning. Our hazan (cantor) from shul was in Tower Two – obediently staying in place as he was advised to do – when a coworker grabbed his hand and forced him down hundreds of steps; they stepped outside seconds before the tower collapsed.

“On Yom Kippur, when he reached the words ‘who by fire,’ he collapsed on the floor, and the whole shul stood in silence, sobbing with him. For weeks, no one in Far Rockaway left their houses until NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani got on television and said it was time to start living again.”

Matti Led, Fair Lawn, New Jersey:

“I was at my desk in Brooklyn, a high school student, staring out the window, wondering why the clouds over Manhattan were so dark. Our principal interrupted class to break the news to us. We thought he was pranking us. A bunch of students ran down to the pay phone to call their parents who worked at the World Trade Center. Lots of kids were crying as they waited and tried to call their parents.

Later, as I took the B68 home through “Little Pakistan” (a Muslim neighborhood on Brooklyn’s Coney Island Avenue), I looked at the passengers on the bus and wondered if any of them were terrorists. Walking home from the bus stop, there were tiny shreds of paper (from the WTC blast) all around me.

“The reality only hit me when I actually saw videos of the planes hitting the towers.”

Tania Hammer, Talpiot, Jerusalem (aliyah 10 years ago):

“I was living in Far Rockaway and could see the Twin Towers across the way. I taught at Hebrew Academy of the Five Towns, and ran to a shop to pick up some supplies when I saw the first plane hit. We thought it was a terrible accident, so I went back to school. When the second plane hit, parents went berserk and converged on the school to grab their children. It was very chaotic, but the teachers couldn’t leave, and we tried to do some therapy with the children that stayed.

“Then we heard the Pentagon was hit, and I became anxious. My sister, a tax lawyer, was scheduled to work at the Pentagon that week. I had to call my sister. I tried and I tried but I couldn’t reach her. Nobody knew what exactly was happening. Eventually my sister picked up. I asked if she was okay, and she said, ‘Yes, why?’ She said she had stayed home to let a plumber in. That’s when I burst into tears.

“She said, ‘Why are you crying?’ and I said, ‘Turn on the radio.’ She turned on the radio and screamed, ‘Oh my gosh.’ There was no way she would have stayed home ordinarily. I told her, ‘Do you know what’s happening? Hashem saved you by sending a faulty toilet!’

“I had a cousin who worked on Wall Street, but every road was closed. He was covered in asbestos and dust from head to toe. He lived in Queens and couldn’t reach his wife or children, so he just followed the crowd and ended up on the Staten Island Ferry to his wife’s cousin’s home. She opened the door and screamed when she saw him. He told her, ‘It’s me, Jeff!’ She thought he was a monster. She was able to reach his wife. And then he had to find his way home. On foot. He must have walked a billion miles that day.

“Last time I went to New York, I visited the Ground Zero Memorial. It’s very well protected, and it offers different things to view, to see, a place to pray.”

Chaim Lauer, Arnona, Jerusalem (aliyah in 2021):

“I was getting on a bus to come into Manhattan. I heard about the first crash while waiting for the bus. On the bus, another passenger had a radio and said the second tower was hit. I said out loud, ‘We are at war!’ The other passengers looked at me as if I were crazy. Most did not understand that we were… and still are… at war.”

Florence Schleifer, Karnei Shomron (aliyah in 2011):

“I lived in Baltimore, Maryland, and was working as a kindergarten teacher in a boys’ yeshiva. My daughter Chanina lived on the Lower East Side. She was taking her two- and three-year-old to play group when they heard a huge boom. They were able to see the Twin Towers from where they were standing – the smoke, the fire, everything.

“My daughter stood on the street as people looked in shock, screaming, ‘Oh my God, a plane just accidentally flew into the World Trade Center!’ Chanina looked at the crowd and exclaimed, ‘That’s no accident. That’s terrorism.’

“Chanina called my husband, who contacted me at school, and then we found out about the plane that flew into the Pentagon. The principal announced, ‘Everybody’s getting picked up.’ As far as we knew, we were sitting ducks. Planes are flying, we’re near Washington, and we’re a boys’ school with hundreds of little Jewish boys.

“Meanwhile, in Israel, our daughter Shira, who lives in Jerusalem’s Har Nof, was having her first baby and was in the hospital. Suddenly the medical staff came into their room and said, ‘You’re American?’ They said, ‘Yeah. They said, “There’s an attack in America,” and they turned on the TV. Our grandson was born after a while. His birthday is 9/11.

“My two granddaughters, after witnessing the crashes firsthand in New York, worked with therapists to process what they had seen. They had them drawing pictures of big buildings on fire and planes flying into buildings.”

Schleifer ends her recollection on a positive note: “And after they made aliyah and grew up – both girls became soldiers in the IDF!”