SURVIVOR OF 1911 FIRE TO BE HONORED TODAY.Byline: Susan Goldsmith Daily News Staff Writer It was 85 years ago, but Bessie Cohen cohen or kohen (Hebrew: “priest”) Jewish priest descended from Zadok (a descendant of Aaron), priest at the First Temple of Jerusalem. The biblical priesthood was hereditary and male. vividly remembers how she survived the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire The Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire that took place in New York City on March 25, 1911, remains a landmark event in the history of U.S. industrial disasters. The fire that claimed the lives of 146 people, most of them immigrant women and girls, caused an outcry against unsafe working , and how 146 of her co-workers died behind the factory's locked doors. Outrage over the disaster led to some of the country's first, most significant laws protecting workers' safety. "The flames were everywhere. I was in the fire," said Cohen who, at 104, is the last survivor of the infamous in·fa·mous adj. 1. Having an exceedingly bad reputation; notorious. 2. Causing or deserving infamy; heinous: an infamous deed. 3. Law a. 1911 disaster. Today, on the 85th anniversary of the disaster, Cohen will be honored during a 10:30 a.m. ceremony at the Jewish Home for the Aging at 18855 Victory Blvd., Reseda. Even at 104, Cohen still recalls in lurid lu·rid adj. 1. Causing shock or horror; gruesome. 2. Marked by sensationalism: a lurid account of the crime. See Synonyms at ghastly. 3. detail fleeing down nine flights of stairs as intense heat and smoke filled the 10-story building. She remembers the screams of her co-workers as they were trapped by the blaze and watching young women leap to their deaths as they tried to get away from the blaze. "I remember seeing girls jumping out the window," she said in an interview Sunday. "It was terrible." Eighty-five years later, Cohen has nightmares about her escape from the inferno, considered one of the worst industrial tragedies in U.S. history. "How can I forget?" Cohen asked. "I can never forget it." At the time of the blaze, Cohen, a Jewish immigrant from Eastern Europe Eastern Europe The countries of eastern Europe, especially those that were allied with the USSR in the Warsaw Pact, which was established in 1955 and dissolved in 1991. , was working for $3 a day as a garment worker. Many of her co-workers who perished in the fire were also young, poor Jewish and Italian immigrants from New York's Lower East Side. Some of the young women who jumped to their deaths to escape the flames were found on the pavement below with their paychecks still grasped in their fists. Although time has faded many details of the disaster for Cohen, she recalls watching her 15-year-old girlfriend Dora jump to her death from the 10th-floor window of the Greene Street building. "She was such a young kid," Cohen said. "I used to give her dancing lessons. I ran right to her house after the fire." Historical accounts differ on the cause of disaster. But survivors and witnesses say the company's owners had locked the factory doors to prevent workers from taking breaks and stealing thread. The owners later were indicted INDICTED, practice. When a man is accused by a bill of indictment preferred by a grand jury, he is said to be indicted. on charges of first- and second-degree manslaughter manslaughter, homicide committed without justification or excuse but distinguished from murder by the absence of the element of malice aforethought. Modern criminal statutes usually divide it into degrees, the most common distinction being between voluntary and but eventually were acquitted. CAPTION(S): PHOTO Bessie Cohen survived the 1911 Triangle factory fire in New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of . Phil McCarten/Daily News |
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