9/11

I visited Ground Zero with a friend recently. It was not my first time. But everytime I go there I become very sad and emotional. Maybe it is my personal memory of this day. Maybe it is the relative quietness in otherwise always busy downtown Manhattan. Maybe it is all those victims names engraved in the two memorials.

 

Then we went to the 9/11 Memorial Museum.

And all of the above was multiplied: Faces are put to the victims names. Voices recorded from phone calls are added. The helplessness of the world at that day is documented.

 

Literally standing on the foundation of the former WTC 70 feet below ground level artifacts preserved after the clean-up of the site are presented. The events, observations, decisions - some wrong, some right - of 9/11 are told minute by minute. The focus is set on the persons involved: the victims, the awfully few survivors, the  decision makers elsewhere, the media and the watchers all around the globe.

 

It is a very quiet and emotional place. Sadness all about. People whispering in many different languages. No one laughing. Some crying. I was one of them.

 

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