Jan Demczur
Poland

"Why they attack the World Trade Center with the civilians working?"
Jan Demczur, a former window cleaner at the World Trade Center.
(photo ctsy. Service Employees International Union)

Jan Demczur's quick thinking and perseverance saved not only his own life on September 11, but the lives of several men he didn't even know. Mr. Demczur came to the U.S. from Poland in 1980, and since 1991 had worked as a window cleaner at the World Trade Center. He remembers riding the elevator past the 44th floor of the north tower the morning of September 11, when something suddenly went wrong. "Elevator went up, and couple seconds later, not even a minute, elevator started going down, dropped several floors," Mr. Demczur now says. "We looked at each other like something wrong." (In fact, American Airlines Flight 11 had just hit their building.) Mr. Demczur says they tried the emergency stop button, tried the intercom, but nothing worked. The elevator shook hard from side to side, a voice came on the intercom saying there had been a problem on the 91st floor, and then things got decidedly worse.  

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