It started out as a typical day at B'nai B'rith International in Washington, D.C. Within hours, however, March 9, 1977, was anything but.

Armed with rifles and machetes, seven Hanafi Muslims stormed the organization's headquarters, at the time located on Rhode Island Avenue in the city's downtown, taking 105 employees hostage. Terrorists from the same Muslim sect also muscled their way into the Islamic Center and the District Building (Washington's city hall), turning places of business, government, and worship into armed camps.

A radio news reporter was shot dead during the rampage and dozens of people were injured, including D.C. Council member and future mayor Marion Barry. One victim was left paralyzed.

Retaliation was the motive. The Hanafis said they were avenging the slaughters four years earlier of seven family members of leader Hamaas Abdul Khaalis – murders that had taken place at the hands of a rival Muslim group; murders that had no connection to either the hostages or the organizations they represented.

The killers had been tried and found guilty, and were behind bars, but the Hanafis wanted the perpetrators turned over to them so that they could mete out their own justice. They also wanted a movie playing around the country, "Mohammed, Messenger of God," a film they considered sacrilegious, removed from theaters.

Thirty-nine harrowing hours later, with assistance from Egypt, Iran, and Pakistan – who dispatched their ambassadors to meet with the Hanafis and read them passages from the Koran highlighting Islam's compassion and mercy – everyone was released. The gunmen were taken into custody, but lives were forever changed.

'A Girl Came in Screaming'

All and all, more than 139 hostages were taken that day, most of them B'nai B'rith International staff.

Today, 30 years later, retired employees Rae Ehrlich, 83, of Silver Spring, Md., at the time a secretary at the organization, and Sy Cohen, also 83, of Olney, Md., then director of B'nai B'rith's community volunteer services, recount how they came to be part of one of the first acts of terrorism to take place on U.S. soil.

"A girl came in screaming, 'There are men with guns!'" Ehrlich recalls in an interview with B'nai B'rith Magazine.

She and several colleagues barricaded themselves in an office, only to have a glass window in the door shattered by a gun-wielding terrorist. Amid threats that they would be killed, the workers were taken to a lower level, where they saw their colleagues lying in a heap.

"There were bodies on top of bodies. I thought they were all dead," Ehrlich says. Meanwhile, in another section of the building, Sy Cohen and his assistant, Dorothy Glazer, received a call about "a gunman in the building." They dashed for the elevator. "We pushed the button…the elevator opened and a rifle came out," Cohen recalls. "He said, 'Get back.' He herded us down to the fifth floor by the steps, opened the door, and there on the landing were a bunch of bodies piled on top of one another. I didn't know whether they were alive or dead. He said, 'Get down,' and he threw us on top of [the] bodies."

A little while later, the hostages on the landing were marched into a conference room. In the midst of renovations, it was empty save for buckets of paint and telephone wire.

And more B'nai B'rith staff. Sitting on the floor, several were bleeding and bore signs of having been beaten.

"They said, 'Be quiet. Don't talk,'" Cohen recalls. "They started tying our hands. Some of the guys who were lucky… wore neckties and they used the neckties to tie them up. I didn't wear a necktie that day… so they tied my hands with telephone wire.

"That wasn't very comfortable. My glasses started slipping down on my nose and Dorothy [the women were not restrained] turned around and shoved my glasses up. The gunman came over and pointed the gun at her and said, 'You do that again, lady, and you are dead.'"

Ehrlich recalls the women being separated from the men. "The men (were) against one wall under the windows and we were against the other… and they had us all lie down in rows, one in back of the other."

She recalls being taunted by the gunmen.

"[One said,] 'We have women prettier than you,' [but] I was glad to hear that, because you didn't know what the heck was going on," Ehrlich says.

Fear pervaded, especially when Khaalis entered the room.

"He started ranting and raving and the first thing I heard was 'Juden,'" says Cohen. "I said to myself, 'uh oh, we are in trouble.'" And then he said, 'I prayed for 100 (hostages) and we have 107. Allah is great.' He said… we would all die and that he would kill us, (but) that his machete was strong and swift and we would not feel a thing."

And then Khaalis began to read to his hostages. His choice of literature? "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," the notorious, antisemitic tome that claims to describe a Jewish plot to take over the world (see related story). Khaalis untied some of the men and ordered them to paint the windows so they could not be observed from the nearby hotels and office buildings or by the police assembling outside.

At one point, some of the hostages – with gun-toting escorts – were allowed to use the restroom. In the brief privacy awarded by a bathroom stall, Cohen prepared to die.

"I took out my wallet and looked at the picture of my wife and children, and said goodbye," he says.

But as the hours dragged on, some of the hostages began to hope. On the second day of the siege, as nightfall approached, the Hanafis allowed food to be brought up. "I said to myself… we have two rabbis here and they will pray, and I prayed to myself," Ehrlich recalls.

Cohen took heart from an outpouring of support that could be felt from outside the building, even if it could not be heard.

"You could feel… I swear, the prayers and the hopes of people all over …. I know that sounds corny, but it's what we felt; we weren't alone," Cohen says. And, 39 hours after it began, it was over.

"The police came up… we were all lying down. They said… they were here to let us out, to free us all...and we were taken down," recalls Ehrlich.

It was 3 o'clock in the morning.

"It was pitch black… but it was a beautiful sky," Cohen says. "When I finally went home and had a hot bath and slept and woke up the next morning, I never saw the sky so blue or the grass so green or the smiles on my kids' faces so beautiful."

Khaalis and his followers – there were 12 in total from the three sites – were sent to prison for their roles in the takeovers. Khaalis died behind bars. Some of his cohorts have since been released. Others remain incarcerated.

The B'nai B'rith employees received counseling, but some never could return to work at the organization. Ehrlich and Cohen, however, did go back.

"I came through it fine," Ehrlich says. "I didn't want to be behind a closed door; that's the only thing that I didn't like."

Cohen adjusted similarly. "For about five years, if you heard a loud noise in the building, you jumped, but it was fine afterward," Cohen says.

Cohen says he has appreciation for things that might otherwise have eluded him.

"You forget sometimes, but I've been given a second chance," Cohen says. "My life went on, and it was good."