June 2024: I knew the patient’s health was stable prior to the procedure, but did not know anything about his personal story. Had I known the full story as I welcomed him to the dental chair, I would not have had the steady hand or calm demeanor necessary for the dental procedure. I’ll tell you more a little later.
Where were you on 9/11? Were you alive? Do you remember or can you imagine the shock and fear of seeing the iconic World Trade Center towers collapsing as airplanes were used as flying bombs? Do you remember our fellow New Yorkers screaming and running in the smoke-filled streets as sirens careened? If you were not running for your life downtown, do you remember wondering who was attacking us? Or wondering whether we were at war?
Stunned by the incredibly horrific event, I answered the radio call for plastic surgeons although I am a general dentist. I had had two hospital rotations in plastic surgery as a resident in a GPR program and was confident that I could be useful for stitching up the expected glass injuries. Credentialing took two weeks. There were no patients with glass injuries; in fact there were unfortunately no living patients! In those two weeks, the mortuary unit of the National Health Service moved into the NYC Medical Examiner’s Office, set up computers, protocols, filing systems and routines for dental identification of the deceased, which was estimated at about 3,000 people from all over the world (though most were Americans).
My work started at midnight on a Tuesday because the families of the uniformed services, especially police and firemen, were outside the MEO’s office, literally beating on the door and screaming, “Do you have my son / father / brother /sister / husband there?” Along with other local dentists I was assigned a regular day and time to search for positive identifications based on dental records matching the clinical information—i.e. corpses or dental parts of corpses. DNA IDs on body parts without heads was going to take months, and it may still be going on. The dental unit had the first positive identifications, to a total of 500. I think we locals felt that our hands and knowledge were needed as we worked our shifts. The truth was grim, but there were enough experienced professionals to do the dental identifications. However, since we were there, we became the government-trained and experienced forensic dentists to be ready for the next mass casualty event, not if it were to happen, but rather when it would happen. I have kept a trauma kit in my car ever since.
Where were you on 9/11? I was in the US Navy Reserves stationed at Fort Schyuler in the Bronx, two days per month and two weeks a year. Right after 9/11 we started dental exams on reservists being called up to ship out. The bottom line was “don’t clear them dentally unless you are willing to pay for the helicopter to airlift the patient off the ship to get the toothache treated,” so preventive care was important before going to the battlefield of shock and awe. These exams made a forensic dental record, to identify the soldier/sailor if he were killed in action. As I was volunteering at the MEO’s office concurrently, I took these exams very seriously. I also realized that my forensic experience and training at the MEO’s office gave me a skill that the Navy was going to need. I didn’t want to deploy to Washington DC to meet Americans coming back from war in coffins. My CO kindly let me go as I had done the three years I had signed on for. I was out with great relief before the Navy caught on to my necessary war skills. Lots of young dentists were commissioned to join America’s new wars. Incidentally, did you know the first sailor killed in our invasion of Italy on September 3, 1943 during World War II was a dental officer?
Where were you on 9/11? Younger generations already forget their answer to this question as time moves the event farther into the past. For 3,000 Americans who were killed on 9/11, the United States went to war for years with two countries, Iraq and Afghanistan. What kind of war would it be if 40,000 Americans had died from terrible crush injuries and fire? What if the weapons of war were not impersonal airplanes collapsing impersonal buildings? What if our 3,000 were mutilated, murdered and burned one-by-one, up close and personal?
Where were you on 10/7? Up close and personal: 1,200 to 1,500 people at a rock concert, and families quietly celebrating the holy day in their homes were mutilated and murdered, some burned alive, one-by-one in front of each other. Murdered up close and very personal by hands of vicious terrorists taught by ISIS and Al Qaeda, our enemies in America’s war on terror. And the “translation” of the number killed in Israel on 10/7 is equivalent to a scenario in which about 40,000 Americans would have died on 9/11. How many countries would we Americans go to war with if that were the case? Israel did not ask for war, did not ask for families to be mutilated and murdered by Hamas, or to have 250 young and old people kidnapped into Gaza. But Israel fights on multiple fronts: Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, ISIS in Iraq, Houthis in Yemen, more Iranian proxies in Syria, Iran itself, and terrorists in the West Bank. ZAKA is the Israeli organization that does rescue and recovery of bodies including dental identifications, which 9/11 showed are very accurate.
Where were you in February 2021? Do you believe that Russia invaded Ukraine? Refugees swarmed out of Ukraine in any way and in any direction that they could. Israel took in 40,000 Ukrainian refugees, mostly Christians, and Dental Volunteers for Israel stepped up to help with dental pain and problems of these new indigent patients. Each Ukrainian needed about 10 visits to be brought to dental health, compared to only five visits for the Ethiopian refugees already in the country using DVI’s services. Dental Volunteers for Israel runs the free Trudi Berger Dental Clinic in Jerusalem, accepting patients referred by the Jerusalem Welfare system, which does not pay for patient treatment! Initially DVI’s clinic was designed to service young children and elderly Holocaust survivors. However, the age of those considered “children” was pushed up to 26 to accommodate soldiers still on active duty and those who became students late due to their military service right after high school. All dentistry is done by volunteer dentists from countries all over the world on donated equipment. DVI accepts money to maintain basic support staff for the visiting volunteer dentists, on a shoestring budget. I have had the pleasure of working with DVI on multiple occasions, most recently in June of 2024.
June 2024: My first patient was a pleasant man from the north of Israel. He, his family and his whole town was relocated away from the Lebanese border and Hezbollah’s missiles. At that time 90% of the hotel rooms in Jerusalem were filled with displaced Israeli families from the North and from the Gaza envelope. My skilled assistant was, on the one hand, talking to the patient but on the other hand looking at her cell phone on the counter behind her. This made getting anything done difficult, and I was about to reprimand her when I recalled that her sons were in the army and her husband was in the reserves, so it made sense to stay in contact as much as possible. I completed the procedure mostly on my own with little help from the distracted assistant but at least I had a cooperative patient.
So where were you on 10/7? Let’s go back to the patient at the beginning of this article, a quite polite young man I found seated in my operator in June 2024. The assistant waited until I had given him a hand to get out of the chair and be dismissed before telling me what brought him to the DVI clinic. He was an agricultural student from Nepal who was studying Israeli agricultural techniques on a kibbutz in the Gaza envelope. On 10/7 he saw his entire class murdered before his eyes and he was shot twice and left for dead. The only reason that he was still in Israel instead of being at home with his family in Nepal was that he had three more months of rehabilitation provided by the Israel health system ahead of him.
Dental Volunteers for Israel accepts dentists from all over the world to work in the clinic. In exchange for working in the clinic, DVI gives them an apartment to stay in although all other costs, like travel, food and tourism, are at the dentists’ expense. In the United States this makes nearly all costs of your trip tax-deductible. You can volunteer or donate to Dental Volunteers for Israel at American Friends for Dental Volunteers for Israel at:
https://americanfriendsofdvi.org/ or https://dental-dvi.org.il or
https://www.ada.org › volunteer-search › dental-volunt
The American Dental Association website lists DVI as a year-round volunteer opportunity: [email protected]
For more information on Zaka visit https://give.zakaworld.org/campaign/we-need-all-the-help-we-can-get-now/
