For the Love of Judaism
Rabbi Michael Pont, Senior Rabbi at Marlboro Jewish Center, shares his message of love, inspiration and Torah.
For the Love of Judaism
Remembering September 11th
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The fourth season of For the Love of Judaism kicks off with a special episode in honor of the 23rd anniversary of September 11th, 2001. In this episode, Rabbi Pont interviews retired New York City firefighter Dave Smentkowski whose experiences on 9/11 and in the days and years that followed will give chills to all of us as we remember tha fateful day.
Shalom. I am Rabbi Michael Pont, and this is for the love of Judaism. And today my guest is David Kimentkowski. David was with the Fire Department of New York, the FDNY Fire and Rescue, and he uh on September 11th, 2001. So we're going to go back uh some 23 years in time to talk to Dave about his thoughts and reflections about that awful, terrible day. Uh Dave, welcome to the program. Thanks for joining me today.
SPEAKER_00Thank you, Radli, good being here. Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_01Very good. Uh, Dave, you know, so many of us remember where we were and what we were doing on September 11th, 2001, when we heard about the bombing. How would you answer those questions? Like, where were you and what were you doing? And what was your first reaction when you heard about the Twin Towers?
SPEAKER_00Well, on the morning of September 11th, uh, unfortunately, I had just made it through the tunnel when my wife was calling me and saying to me, it was a bombing in the city, it was a bombing in the city, they hit the twin towers. I said, Robin, there's no way they hit the twin towers. It probably was a small plane, it's okay. I start to drive to Vidock in Hoboken, and my wife says to me, David, they hit the other tower. And I'm like, there's no way it's possible. And we lived in Seak Office at the time. When I got to Seak Office, I met with my wife because she physically had to touch me and make sure I was okay, and turned me around when I saw the first tower collapse. I instantly said to her, I have to go back. I have to go back into the city. I have to help my friends, my peers, my coworkers, my family. And uh she said, I won't be here when you come back. And I said, Okay, I'm on my way back to the city. And as I returned back to the tunnel, I was stopped. And I was held there till 3 30 in the morning on until September 12th, before they allowed me clearance to go back through the tunnel. And as I waited at the tunnel, uh, I waited there with my brother and my wife at that point couldn't communicate anymore because the towers had been down, the communication was down, and around 345 Daytona carding, it's a little tough to talk about, had brought me back through the tunnel. It was a garbage company. And they said, we'll give you a ride through. And as we entered the tunnel, we followed a Humvee with two Army personnel on board with AK-47 guarding us through the tunnel. I got dropped off on Canal Street. When they dropped me off, I had met a couple of my friends over there that were also on the job. And we walked down Canal Street, and it was the most eerie feeling in the world to walk down Canal Street and know of it being a happy, active place, people biking, people skating, people laughing to pure darkness and just sounds of cell phones being left on the ground ringing in hopes that family members somewhere could get in touch with them. And as we continue to walk towards Tower 7, Tower 7 was my first stop. We met there with the FBI and special services, and they briefed us on what would be happening next. And as we were standing in there, I remember us standing next to a friend of mine, Jimmy, who I'm still friends with. And I said to him, Wow, I thought there was no power here. What's that beeping noise? And he's like, That's our sway meters on the building, because the building was swaying. And as I walked out of the building across from it, the Millennium Hilton flag was still on fire burning. The American flag was still in flames. So that was my first encounter of what actually happened. As we approached World Trade One, we started doing what we thought would have been a rescue mission, but returned to recovery. As we approached, uh, our first find was a female body that had not made it. And then it just continued through the darkness into the light. And it was probably 5:30 on September 13th. And I had to just clear my mind and get away from the devastation, the sadness, and thinking my friends that were on the job, my wife, who was originally from Breezy Point, had many friends there. My brother-in-law was there, thinking, like, what would my next find be? I just had to walk away. So I had asked one of the guys to take me down to 57th Street. And as we approached Canal Street, people were throwing pictures of their family members. This is a day later. Help me find them. And it probably was the saddest ride of my life. And that continued on for many, many years as we dug on the pile. As I continued to stand there and remove body parts, it continued for years. It was five years that I stood down there and removed body parts and had families approach, have you seen this person? We're talking years after, three years after, where there was nothing left of the pile other than below ground level. And people were still asking, Have you seen this person? And you didn't. And it was tough. It was very tough. That was truly my first encounter was being dropped off a canal street. And I won't ever forget that. And to this day, the sounds and the smell don't leave my body. It still haunts me to this day.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. All right. Thanks.
SPEAKER_00All right. Thank you. It seemed like five minutes. No problem. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01Dave, can you describe what you did at the World Trade Center site as part of your role with the fire department?
SPEAKER_00We first started, it was actually we were trying, it was a rescue mission. We were hoping to find people alive. A few days into it, it became a recovery. So mainly what we did after three or four days on the pile was to find body parts. We just dug to find body parts. That's mainly all it was after the first three to four days. We knew that at that point there had been no one that would have survived. And we just continued looking for body parts to bring some sort of closure home to families that didn't have their loved ones near them or a full body. And that's truly what we did. We just dug. And every time we found the body part, if it was a civilian, we brought it on the gator. If it was a member of service, we would stop the whole pile and we would bring down the American flag and put them on the stretcher and bring them up on the gate, and everybody would stop and line up and bring them to the top of the pile. And that went on for years. Probably it was a total of five years that I did that removing body parts. And actually, the last body part that I removed as part of the recovery on the pile was from the Deutsche Bank. I removed that one of my good partners. We went up to the top. It was uh FEMA that was impaled on the upper floor as they were dismantling. They found it, and we were called there to pick it up.
SPEAKER_01So you for five years you were you were searching for body parts. That is that is really shocking.
SPEAKER_00For five years, it was me and thousands of other guys that just dug for whether it was a finger, it was a piece of uh a femur or a foot and a boot, just to try and get some sort of DNA out of that body part to bring closer to the family. Even one of my friends found service for him for up to five years after until there was a body part that was found, and actually they would be able to declare him and they believe that he was deceased. So it was a long time. I spent a long time in front of World Trade One, uh, from 2004 until 2005 was probably the most amount of body parts that we removed as we got lower into the pile. I stood there with a good partner of mine, Bruce, and we just waited. We were an 11 franc unit at the time, and it would cost 11 franc for the removal, and we knew right away what we were going for. And actually, uh the night that I brought my wife to the to uh ground zero, she had wanted to see what was going on. So it was years later, I had brought her there, and one of the firefighters' sons that was killed on the job had not been found. And the night that we got there, we got there on the uh the landing, which overlooked a pile, and we had saw the lights, the lights came on. I said to my wife, like, uh, I have to step down because I can't watch this. And I knew at that point there that he was found. And I saw the gator go down, I saw the stretcher come out, and even if it was, you know, the smallest body part that was connected to a member of service, they covered it on the gator with a flag. A gator is like a small vehicle, like a four-wheeler, that they use to remove people in and out of the world trade. And then that would come up to an FDNY ambulance. That FDNY ambulance was then the crew would take the body part to uh to the hospital where the trailers were, and they would we would put the bodies in the trailers or we'd bring them down to the morgue. Wow. And uh it went on for years. For many, many people it went on for years.
SPEAKER_01I I again I had no idea that it went on for years like that. That's that is just horrific.
SPEAKER_00I I mean it was actually uh three weeks ago, one of my friends called me who works at the Fresh Kills Landfield. He's an FBI agent, and he had called me to let me know that they had found an actual foot inside a shoe. So all these years later, they're still finding body parts. Like, you know, there was tons of barges and trailers full of body parts that they're still sifting through, and they just found actually a foot with DNA. So whether or not it's closure for a family that didn't know or another part that they found, I never followed up on it. Wow.
SPEAKER_01Dave, can you give us some examples of bravery or compassion that you witnessed or heard about either on 9-11 or in the days that followed?
SPEAKER_00Well, on 9-11, the first bombing before the actual 9-11 bombing, when the uh towers were bombed from underneath, one of my friends actually carried down a lady who was pregnant down 30 flights of stairs on his back. On 9-11, he actually uh had reached out to his wife, and normally he would call his wife in the morning, they had a six-month-old baby, and he said to her, Listen, I'm going down, I'm gonna grab breakfast, I'll come back up. And he actually was never found. So for me, like his first account to rescue that lady counts towards 9-11. I've had other friends like my brother-in-law, was uh on the street at the time, and he helped carry people off the street. My partner's on the job, just escorting people to get him on Canal Street and all the civilians that were on the water that day, because as we all remember, the skies were as blue as could be, pulled their boats into the new into the New York Harbor and started dropping off people in Jersey City. My cousin's a deputy chief for Jersey City, and I remember him telling me stories that people coming over in boatloads just covered in dust because civilians with boats just didn't know what was going to happen next, and they helped them clear the island just to get people out of there. There's so many stories that I've heard, and I would say 95% of them are believable of what I heard of helping people, just the priest alone. The priest, the fire chaplain, was killed. He was hit by a falling body. Not many people know that story, but the chaplain was actually as the fire department, uh, the brass, which is the topper fire, you know, the top guys in the fire department, your chiefs of battalion, chiefs of deputy chiefs, and your cops as they were going into world trade, he was giving them last rights, and he was killed by a fallen body. So our own chaplain who was killed was carried out by civilians and a cop. So to me, they were heroes. They ran back to get him to try and save him, but he was already gone.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
SPEAKER_00It wasn't easy. I can tell you that. It was it was not an easy time.
SPEAKER_01It's just shocking to hear some of these details. I mean, so many people were impacted in very personal ways. Uh, I mean, did the bombing affect you, your family, and your friends? And can you just tell us how how is it very personal for you?
SPEAKER_00It definitely changed my lifestyle, and it definitely changed my family. Well, my wife at the time, because I would go to work before the 9-11 attacks, and I was part of the fire department, and it was my first love, my true dream. It's where I wanted to be. And then after 9-11, going to work was always tough for my wife. Like, I remember going when they transferred me out of actually after 9-11, they transferred me to East Harlem. And I remember my wife being like, Wow, this is a blessing. Like, you're away from ground zero. But I was in I was in East Harlem. And when they sent me back to ground zero, I remember going back and it was too much to handle because it just had such an effect mentally on me, my partners, that my good partners that I was with on 9-11 and we were at ground zero, we didn't talk for years because we couldn't face each other. We had gone through so much together that it was almost my last partner I spoke to was probably about six years ago because I couldn't face him. And I remember meeting him for the first time. I went up to his house up in uh New York State and us just hugging and just looking at each other and being like, it's behind us. We've made it, we're good. Some of my friends uh unfortunately have taken their own lives. My partner, who I was on the pile with, who was a young female, just died three months ago to lung cancer. She was diagnosed with lung cancer, she passed away. So that changed the lives of her children, who I watched as babies grow up, who now have no mom. Their father, who was also on a job, is sick. So it has a big impact. A big impact. My brother-in-law, who was on the pile, has never been right the same. You know, again, he has been in and out of institutions trying to get his head on straight, and he just can't do it because of the trauma that he witnessed that day. And as he continued to run back until those towers fell, he just he's not the same person. There's a lot of people I know that have changed that won't ever be who they were because of what happened. And it's sad, it's very sad.
SPEAKER_01That that is heartbreaking. What what was life like in New York City in the days and the weeks after 9-11, from your perspective as a firefighter?
SPEAKER_00Honestly, it was truly amazing. Everybody wanted to help. It was a whole different New York. It was a New York that I had never seen. I grew up near the city. My dad owned a big company in the city, and my view of New York was everybody rushing around, not wanting to help anybody. After 9-11, everybody was helping each other. It was a total different feeling. Not even being on a job as a member of service, but just being there as a civilian. It was a different, it was a different time. It was a different world. And if it stayed that way, it would have been amazing. Like I remember coming home saying to my wife, like, wow, the city's amazing. Like people are so caring. Like somebody falls, nine people didn't step over them, nine people helped them. Now, a thousand people would step over them. It was just totally different. It was respectful, it was caring, and it was uh something I've never witnessed. And unfortunately, I hope I never witness it again because if I do witness it, it's because of a tragedy. It's not because of good hearted people. I know it's horrible to say, but that that stress, that horror, that traumatic time brought everybody together. But as time went on, it faded. As the pile got smaller and as people forgot, it turned back to New York.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. That's that's human nature, I guess. Even with something so tragic like 9-11, at some point people sort of revert back to, you know, their old ways. A little more, a little more, you know, self-absorbed, if you will. But at least for a period of time, people woke up and, you know, cared more deeply about the people around them. Dave, how has 9-11 impacted your life and the life of your family? Like you said that your wife, uh, like she was happy that uh you got transferred to East Harlem. She was scared that you would have to go back to the World Trade Center site. How has 9-11 impacted you personally? Like, do you have health issues because of your work down there? Do you have emotional tr issues with the trauma? How has it impacted you?
SPEAKER_00Uh I've had some issues in my health. It definitely has taken it definitely has taken a toll on my my body as well as my wife. Uh, my kids have known I've had some issues. The real issues we don't disclose because I have a 15 and 18-year-old. So I protect them. But uh Sloan Ketterin has definitely helped me and they brought me a long way. And every day that I wake up, I feel that I'm luckier than all my other partners that didn't make it. So, as bad as it could be for me, my days are good. I'm waking up and have healthy kids. And that's the way I go through life. I have a wonderful wife who supports me, who's probably the best mom and partner I could ever ask for. And as long as God continues to keep me healthy as I can be, and my kids healthy and my wife healthy, I I appreciate it and I'm thankful for it. I mean, 9-11 definitely did affect us as a family, but we try and move past it. And waking up every morning is the gift that I've been given from 9-11 because a lot of my partners don't wake up anymore.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's certainly experiencing such trauma and working directly uh with it the way you did, it can't help but make you appreciate, you know, all the blessings that you have in life and the that sense of gratitude that you just expressed. That makes a lot of sense.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. It puts everything in perspective. And I even tell my kids now like life is so precious. Back when I was on the world trade, I was 26 years old. Me and my wife were starting off in life together. We bought our first house, we were gonna have a family. There was nothing that we thought could come between us or stop us. And we were stopped. 9-11 stopped us and many other people. And when we sat back and we thought about, you know, years later what happened. If I wasn't coming through the tunnel on 9-11, I would have been in their towers because in my blood, I'm a professional rescuer. I love adrenaline. That's why I do what I do. And it would have been a whole different outcome. So to be where I am today, I have to be thankful. There's no way I could be ungrateful. And that's why I continue to do what I do. I I love being at the Marlboro Jewish Center. I mean, they're so welcoming. It's a great community, and I'm thankful. I truly am. I'm I'm thankful to be around good people, and I only associate myself with good people, and that's it. And that's why I am where I am. And Saturday mornings when I see you coming across the street, I'm happy to see you because I'm like, I'm around good people. And hopefully this generation and my kids will realize that the more you associate yourself with good people, the better you feel as a person. That's the God's on the truth. Like, I truly believe that. You know, my worst days are aren't some people's best days. I tell my kids that every day. Like, you have to realize and appreciate life because what we have is a gift, and people don't have that gift. Like, my gift was not being in the city that day, my wife not being in the towers. My wife has been in the towers numerous times. We were both stranded and locked out of the city on the Jersey side. That's a blessing. Right. That's a big blessing for me. And a lot of people don't think like that's a blessing, but to be locked out of New York, yeah, it was amazing that day. Not to be able to go back through when I went back through, yes, what I experienced was horrific, but I knew I was going back to help. And that's what made me really want to go back was to help.
SPEAKER_01Right. Uh, Dave, you know, the the 9-11 memorial opened in New York City on September 11th, 2011, on the 10, the 10-year anniversary of the tragedy. Um, have you visited the memorial and how did that affect you?
SPEAKER_00I actually uh I work right right now, I work for a big transportation company, so I handle their security on the East Coast. I actually happened to be on a job, and one of the gentlemen that was an NYPD cop at the time happened to be standing outside of it, who's a really good friend of mine who just passed away from uh cancer from 9-11. And it was it was 2017, it was September, and I remember that Frankie McHugh, and he was like, Hey, Sminkowski, you want to go back to the footprint of the world trade? And I'm like, I don't know, Frank, it's been a long time. And uh, we wound up going back that night together, and walking in there was so heart-wrenching because he had lost his brother, I had lost friends, we had lost a really good friend of ours from Sea Caucus, and I said to Frankie, hey, listen, I would love to find this guy and just see his name, just to touch it, because he was a good friend. We we grew up in Sea Caucus together. My wife and his wife were friends. They had a brand new newborn baby. He was the guy that was killed in the elevator going down for breakfast during 9-11. And uh, as he said, Come on, I'll help you, and we turned around. My hand was leaning on his name, on the on the actual memorial. So we found him right away. And I walked around with Frank. I found his brother. But it was heartbreaking to see so many people that we didn't find. You saw all those names, and being on that pile, you would have thought you found more people, and you didn't. It was just amazing to see, and it's a great memorial because I go down there now a lot of times when I'm in the city just to walk around, just to think and clear my head. So for me, it's part of my therapy, I would say. And I see a lot of guys down there that I know, and I say people of our own kind because the trauma and what we went through, they only understand it. So it's hard to talk to someone that hasn't done it, but to go down there and see somebody and say, hey, listen, I was FDNY and talk to them. It's therapeutic, it really is. So, I mean, my kids have not been down there yet. My wife was down there with me, but my kids don't want to go yet. So when they're ready, we'll go. Understood. But I'm against having but I am against having a mall down there. I'll be honest with you. I think that mall is very disrespectful. They have a mall at the world trade that goes underneath that I wasn't happy with, if you want to tell the truth, because I feel that it's a final resting place for some people that have never made it out of there. And now we have a mall.
SPEAKER_01All right, understood. Dave, let me ask you um, did 9-11 change your outlook about our government, people from other nations, humanity in general? Any any thoughts about that that you want to share?
SPEAKER_00Uh it definitely changed my thoughts about the government because as uh President Bush stood on that pile and said to all of us, this air is clean, you don't need masks, you're good to go. It wasn't good to go. So it definitely made me think different about our government. As far as you know, who bombed us and who did it, you can't you can't discriminate against the whole group. Did it make me jaded for a while? Yes, I was very jaded. Am I was I prejudiced at the time against, you know, the al-Qaeda, the Islamics? No, I I I wasn't because unfortunately, like I tell my kids when we discuss it, some of these kids are trained to do what they do. So we can't be mad at them. We have to sympathize with some of them. And that's truly uh how I felt after it. I I was just I was more mad at the government that they allowed us, the president, to allow us to do what we did and not protect us. So it was discouraging. But as far as being angry and angry against, you know, one nationality or uh the uh the Islamics, like no, it wasn't everybody's fault. There's good people out there. You know, there's bad apples in every group. And I tell my kids that we don't judge anybody on race, religion, color, and sex. We judge them on their own person because to discriminate against one whole race, one whole color, one whole religion for what someone does is the wrong way to live life.
SPEAKER_01Right. Okay, that's great. Um, one last question, Dave. We've been kind of talking about this throughout our Interview, but is there any advice that you would give to young people? Um, people who were born after 9-11, um, just based on your experience?
SPEAKER_00Well, my advice to them would be truly to enjoy life, be thankful for what you have, and realize that at any minute in your life it could change, and to truly reflect on 9-11 and look back when you're having your difficult times and you think it's tough, and look back and see what happens in our country. And review it and realize how lucky you really are. I tell my kids all the time like, look back on history, look what's going on today, and look at where we live. We live in a great country. And we're fortunate. So be thankful for what's here. And don't be upset because you know, you didn't get the iPhone 12. I tell my kids all the time. You have a beautiful home, we live in a great country. Be thankful for our freedom more than anything. Be thankful for our freedom of speech and our freedom to live life the way we choose, because it's truly a blessing. A lot of people don't have this opportunity. And I know the younger generation has a lot of entitlement, and I do say that. And I tell my kids, entitlement is not the way to go. Uh integrity is how we should raise our children, not with entitlement. And I tell them every day integrity is what builds a beautiful country, beautiful people, not entitlement. So enjoy what you have and be thankful for it. And don't look to see what the guy next door has and try to be better than him.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, Amain, brother, I am with you 100% there. That sense of gratitude and humility and just appreciating all of the blessings of life, even in the midst of awful tragedy and sorrow. So, Dave, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today. Uh, this has been an enlightening interview. I learned a lot that I didn't know about 9-11. And I want to thank you, obviously, for your service. I'm just really uh awed and impressed thinking about uh what you did for you know for our country on that day and in the in the years after. Um, thank you so much, Dave.
SPEAKER_00Thank you, Rabbi. I appreciate it. And uh as always, I'm grateful for you and the Marboro Jewish Center for accepting me and having me there. It's truly something I enjoy. And you guys have welcomed me with open arms, and it means a lot to me. And thank you for this opportunity to talk about what I experienced, and hopefully it helps enlighten other people on what it truly happened that day, especially our young people, because we tend to forget about the past and we need to remember the past so we can change the future.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, thank you so much, Dave. Okay, well, again, everybody, that was Dave Cementkowski, who uh worked with the FDNY Fire and Rescue on September 11th, 2001, and for years after, as he described, I forgot to mention, and Dave mentioned it a couple of times, uh, I met Dave because he is a security guard uh with Iron Rock Security uh at my synagogue, the Marlborough Jewish Center. That's how we got to talking, and that's how I found out that uh he was, you know, working at the World Trade Center on 9-11. Dave really made me realize how traumatic and difficult it has been for first responders like him to just spend years looking for body parts is just so catastrophic. Um, I can't even imagine that. And also, as Dave said, you know, the health conditions we know at the World Trade Center site were not good. And so many first responders uh now have serious health issues as a result. And that's that's really um that's really tragic and so, so unfortunate. So we should do everything we can to support people like Dave uh and to try to help them with any health issues and and of course mental health issues. It's tragic to hear that that many people, as Dave said, some of his partners and people he knew um are having serious, serious mental health crises in their lives. They're having trouble getting on track, and many have taken their own lives because they just can't deal with the trauma that they witnessed on 9-11 and in the weeks and years beyond. Uh, here in Marlborough, every September 11th, we have a memorial ceremony. And I always go, sometimes I participate by offering a prayer, a benediction. Um, but I'm always sure to be there to represent uh not just myself, but my community. Um, so one year I gave this benediction, uh, which has an image from the prophet Isaiah that to me is is a powerful, kind of a powerful tribute fitting for 9-11. So these are the words of Isaiah. This is in chapter 55. Isaiah wrote, Seek the Lord where he can be found, call upon him when he is near. In place of the thorn bush, a cypress will rise. In place of the nettle, a myrtle will rise. This will be a monument to the Lord, never to be cut down. And so this image of two trees rising up from the lowly brush, it just reminds me of the towers, the towers that were cut down to rubble. It makes me feel like that, you know, the trees are like symbolic of the American spirit that will rise up, that has risen up again in spite of the tragedy, the terrorism that we faced on September 11th, all those years ago. These two trees, the Cyprus and the Myrtle, they are like pillars of strength and courage, of compassion and love. And I think that the prophet understood that while the enemy of peace can destroy what is physical, the enemy can never extinguish our faith, our determination to create a just and good world. And so we pray to God to be with everyone who still feels pain even today over the losses that still seem so poignant. And I hope that God, let's pray that God will give us all strength to move forward as we reflect on these many years after 9-11, after such an unspeakable tragedy. May we all remember that light always overpowers darkness. So, everyone, that's the end of our episode today. Thank you so much for listening and peace out.