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September 13, 2002/Tishri 7 5762, Vol. 55, No. 3
Social services aid Sept. 11 recovery
RACHEL POMERANCE
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
NEW YORK - The stench in New York after Sept. 11 reminded Julia Millman of Europe.
"I have seen it. I know what it's all about," said the 76-year-old survivor of Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen.
In addition to losing her 40-year-old son Ben in the terror attack on the World Trade Center - he was a construction worker on the 101st floor of Tower One - Millman said the death and devastation revived gut-wrenching memories of her family's murder in the Holocaust.
As a young girl, Millman was forced to tie a rope around her dead mother's neck and drag her gassed body to a heap of other victims.
Now those old feelings of motherlessness and abandonment have returned.
"If it wasn't for my social worker that tried to console me, that tried to help me in my sorrow, I don't know if I would be here today," Millman said.
Millman is one of hundreds of thousands who have received assistance from Jewish social service agencies for traumas associated with Sept. 11.
For the most part, they praise the aid they received.
The Jewish community launched a massive, coordinated effort to help both Jewish and non-Jewish victims of the attacks. The UJA-Federation of New York raised funds in New York, where two of the planes hit, and the United Jewish Communities, the umbrella group of North American federations, raised funds throughout North America.
In areas affected by the attack, Jewish federations and their affiliated social service agencies also received government grants or private funding from foundations or individual donors.
The funds have been used to provide support groups for victims and those re-traumatized by the incident, including Holocaust survivors or new immigrants.
They also were used to provide cash assistance and job counseling and to help victims navigate the bureaucracy to get financial aid from government and private funds.
One of 13 major charities comprising the 9/11 United Services Group, a resource for victims in New York City, the UJA-Federation of New York has been at the center of the Jewish communal response.
As of mid-August, the federation had raised $7.6 million in special funding for its agencies to expand services for Sept. 11 victims.
Several direct service providers told JTA they were pleased with the response from the organized Jewish community.
There wasn't "one second that we felt that we were out there alone," said Jeff Lampl, executive director of Jewish Family Services of Bergen County.
The agency's client pool "doubled almost overnight" after Sept. 11, Lampl said, and "almost to this day, taking care of these families has become the central concern of this agency."
Many of those who received services praise the response.
Robin Wiener, who lost her brother, Jeff, 33, in the attack on the World Trade Center, said the sibling support group she attended - sponsored by the Jewish Social Service Agency of Greater Washington, the primary Jewish organization responding to local victims there - was "amazing."
The sibling support group formed after a gathering of friends and family members of Sept. 11 victims that the agency sponsored in February.
Robert Alonso praised the Jewish Child Care Association, which helped his family.
When the planes hit, Alonso's wife, Janet, 41, managed to make a quick phone call from the 97th floor of Tower One to tell her husband that she loved him.
The call was their last conversation. The sudden death of his wife, the family's primary breadwinner, left Alonso and his two young children - one of whom has Down's syndrome - reeling.
The Jewish Child Care Association has provided weekly meetings with a psychologist for Alonso's children Robbie, 2, and Victoria, 3. It also has helped him obtain the maximum government funds for the family.
While many victims praised the Jewish communal response, some had complaints. Several family members of victims in Washington said there was no outreach from the organized Jewish community except for their synagogues, according to the Washington Jewish Week.
The federation defended its work, saying it was the first agency in Washington to hold a memorial service for victims and that the Jewish Chaplaincy immediately called the families of Jewish victims to offer help.
The federation has dispersed the nearly half-million dollars it raised in its Sept. 11 fund to Jewish and non-Jewish agencies, according to a federation official. UJC funds were earmarked for Jewish needs, the official said.
"We really did everything we could," she said.
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