Bob Beckwith is slowly becoming forgetful. Sometimes the 89-year-old pauses in the middle of a sentence. Then he asks his wife what he was just talking about. But the moment 20 years ago when he stood arm in arm with the President of the United States in front of the world, the former firefighter will always remember. It was the days after the attacks on 11. September 2001 and Beckwith and hundreds of helpers dug for life in the rubble of the World Trade Center. Then George W. Bush visited Ground Zero.
«We had no idea that the President was coming. And if we did, we’d forgotten, »says Beckwith, who spent days looking tirelessly for a friend’s missing son. He was standing on top of a wrecked fire engine when Bush showed up. “And he comes straight to me and he reaches out his arm and I pull him up.” The pictures that follow – Bush with megaphone and arm around Beckwith – go around the world as a symbol of American perseverance. 20 years later, the firefighter is still one of the faces of the attacks 11. September, hero and victim at the same time.
The days in 2001 were among the worst of his life, says Beckwith. He had long since retired, but when the World Trade Center collapsed over hundreds of firefighters, he decided to help his comrades. “I knew some of these guys,” he says. “I worked with their fathers many years ago.”
The US flag that Bush was holding now hangs in Beckwith’s house, an hour and a half east of Manhattan, where Long Island is dominated by unadorned working-class neighborhoods. His wife let them be part of the scene together with the cover of “Time Magazine”.
Two decades after Beckwith dug into the rubble field with his shovel, the sound of rippling water fills what was once Ground Zero. According to the will of its builder, the noise should mix with your own heartbeat and thus commemorate the almost 3000 victims of the most serious terrorist act in the history of the country. The square fountains, lined with trees, symbolize the earlier ground plan of the World Trade Center, with the names of the victims engraved on the edge.
An eerie emptiness
“Nothing should ever be built there again,” thought star architect Daniel Libeskind as he descended to the rocky foundation of the towers in the rain a few weeks after the attacks. «It was an eerie, eerie emptiness. When you’re down in the pit looking back at the streets of New York, people look like little ants, ”he says. The architect’s vision of creating a place of remembrance and relegating the new high-rise to the northern edge of the area finally became a reality.
If you go down to this place today, in the huge concrete tub of the former World Trade Center, you will find yourself in the museum that Libeskind designed. The recorded voices of survivors echo through a room. They tell of their escape from the towers. A few steps further, relatives say the names of their murdered friends, partners or children. There is also a fire helmet with the number 164 on display – it belongs to Bob Beckwith.
The pictures from New York, for so many the unofficial capital of the world, stuck in the mind. But the wreckage of the American fateful day was also piling up in the Pentagon in Washington, where one of the aircraft plowed into it and brought down part of the US Department of Defense. And also in a field in the state of Pennsylvania, where the fourth hijacked machine crashed due to the intervention of courageous passengers – there is also a memorial here today.
Worldwide shock
The victims, whose images caused worldwide tremors, are also unforgettable. For example the completely covered with dust “Dust Lady” Marcy Borders, who after the 11. September could not work for ten years. In 2015 she finally died of cancer at the age of 42. Or “The Falling Man”, a man falling headlong on the facade of the skyscraper, whose disturbing photo also worked on many artists.
It was never clarified beyond doubt who the “Falling Man” was. And the identity of many other dead remains unclear – the German Mechthild Prinz worked on exactly that. The now 63-year-old from the Rhein-Sieg district came to New York for a research stay in the 1990s and stayed. As a coroner for the metropolis she reported on 11. September 2001 directly for the night shift.
«This collapse pulverized everything – desks, computers. A lot of the corpses were fragmented, of course, ”she recalls. The last list of missing persons in the New York attacks included 2,753 people. In the forensic medicine department and in Prinz’s forensic biology department, 289 intact corpses and almost 22,000 body parts were delivered in the days and weeks that followed.
The requirement: Everything that looks like human tissue and is larger than half a thumb must be tested. The results are compared with information and materials given by the families of the missing. At that time, the work was not yet digitized, DNA samples are not part of the routine. “That was around the clock, day and night,” recalls Prinz. “I think I was home two days until December.”
Only 60 percent of the victims identified
The work is still going on. Only 60 percent of the victims have now been identified. With ever new technologies and methods, the remaining remains are worked on, a laborious and lengthy process. “Some samples are not identified because no family has given something, and some victims are not identified because none of them was found,” says Prinz, who has since moved to the forensic sciences faculty at John Jay College in Manhattan.
Prince does not believe that the identity of all victims can ever be established. “And I believe that some of the corpses unfortunately disappeared without a trace as a result of the collapse and the fire.” Nevertheless, it is important to continue – “because it was promised to the families of the victims”.
What remains is a tragedy that has not come to an end even after 20 years. And Daniel Libeskind also notes that the new World Trade Center complex is not quite finished: a high-rise is still under construction. An image that is also encouraging: New York as a city that has not only risen again, but continues to grow.
But while New York is blooming again despite Corona setbacks, many of the heroes paid off 11. September, which were exposed to many toxins for days, a high price. Bob Beckwith has to go back to the clinic in a few days: “This is the fourth time I’m being operated on in the hospital because of malignant melanoma on my face,” he says. He calls it the «cancer of the 11. September».
Text: Benno Schwinghammer and Christina Horsten, dpa
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