'And I Hadn't Typed My Will'

Besse Zaritsky, 55, a mother of seven from suburban Silver Spring, Md., was at work as an editorial assistant on the National Jewish Monthly Wednesday morning when she heard "stomping up the stairs" in the B'nai B'rith building. Here is her account, told to TIME Correspondent Marguerite Michaels, of the ordeal that followed.

"We decided to barricade ourselves in one of the eighth-floor offices. We shoved the desk in front of the door, but they started beating the door down. We opened it up, and standing there were three gunmen. My boss, Charles Fenyvesi, who was captured by the Germans as a child and then caught by the Russians during the Hungarian uprising [of 1956], asked them what they wanted. One gunman--they called themselves 'soldiers'--hit him with his hand. Charles fell and his glasses went flying. I don't think he ever got them back.

"They told us to go to the conference room and lie face down with our hands stretched out, holding on to the feet of the person in front of us. I could tell that other hostages were being led in. One of the gunmen kept counting us and saying, 'Allah said to have 100.' They were cruel. They would say, 'For every one of our men who die, we'll kill ten of you.' They said they'd chop off our heads. 'You won't see any blood, you won't feel anything,' they'd say.

"But then they would be compassionate. They brought rugs for the women to lie on. They collected newspapers and vinyl wallpaper to cover the women at night. They made the men give us their suit jackets. They were careful about people who needed medicine. They told the young girls who got a little hysterical to 'just be cool.'

"But if you talked loud to your neighbor, they would swing a rifle in your direction. They never stopped swearing at us. They called us Yahudi [Jews] and bitches. It seemed like we were face down for hours. I thought about the Holocaust. I feel I know now how they [the victims] must have felt.

"One of the young girls had on a very short skirt, and when she lay down, a gunman told her to cover herself up. 'We're not interested in that,' he said. 'I have three beautiful wives.' They had this thing about cleanliness. They told the men they had to sit to go to the bathroom, so they wouldn't splash urine around. They had the male hostages clean up the toilets. There was one girl who wet her pants. The gunmen told a B'nai B'rith man to clean the floor, and they had the girl take off her wet slacks and put on a pair of painter's overalls.

"The gunmen separated the men from the women--men on one side of the room, women on the other. At night I only dozed about an hour, but I heard snoring. I thought about my family and how I hadn't typed my will and how I hadn't been able to transfer money in my bank account into bonds. And then I wished I'd spent the money--maybe on an aquamarine ring or a trip.

"The gunmen were nervous when they heard sounds they couldn't identify. They had a telescope they used to watch the police. The General [Hanafi Leader Khaalis] made a speech about his dead babies and how the Jews didn't care about his babies or South African babies. He said he wasn't afraid to kill us and he wasn't afraid to die. He was on the phone a lot. He came back once and said, 'I've just talked to the whole world--Sweden, London and Europe. But we're going to fight to the end.'

"They stood guard for a long time. You could tell they were getting tired. They no longer called each other 'Brother' and began fighting as to how we should be treated.

"Suddenly they were letting us talk pretty loud. Several minutes passed before we realized there were no gunmen in the room. And then the police arrived--flakjackets, helmets, guns. Someone asked, 'Are you really the cops?' And they turned their guns on us and told us to shut up. I think they thought there might still be gunmen in the room. When they eased up, we all started kissing and hugging and a few people formed a circle to recite a Jewish prayer--it's a traditional prayer thanking God for preserving us."

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