Mindy Hersh oral history interview conducted by Dr. Benjamin Luft, October 18, 2010

About

Mindy worked for the NYPD in Manhattan criminal court on 9/11/01. On the morning of 9/11, she was at her dentist's office across the street from the World Trade Center when the planes hit the buildings. She went to the window and saw the silhouette of the plane in the tower. She returned to her office in the criminal court building, and because of the uncertainty of the situation, she brought about five or six prisoners uptown to the 17th precinct in a paddywagon. As she was driving uptown, she saw people running and crying like in a "King Kong movie". She arrived back at the courthouse at about 7 PM, drove to her home in Levittown, slept for a few hours, and returned to the courthouse. The Manhattan criminal court building was in the "red zone" and was about five minutes from Ground Zero. Mindy walked to the site and described the scene as "The most devastating thing I ever saw in my life." She spoke of the sadness and the quiet-"You could hear a pin drop." She was assigned to the pile and was about 15 stories up on the bucket brigade. She went under beams looking for survivors and could feel the heat rising and smell the bodies. Mindy was at the site every day, alternating between the morgue and the pile. At the morgue, she was responsible for vouchering bodies and property-keys, wallets, etc. The enormity of the event hit her when she saw the thousands of pictures of victims in the morgue.

Archive

Library of Congress, in Library of Congress

Licence or status

Rights statement at the Library of Congress, as the Library of Congress states it.

Credit

Library of Congress

Language

English

Country

United States

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