Read the video transcript here
September 11, 2001, 8:46 am
Pat Moore
“I watched TV and heard a plane, but I didn't think anything about it.
It sounded terribly close, but I didn't think anything about it either.
And then I heard the bang. "
Mary Perillo
»I was so wide awake immediately that I stood by my bed and thought: How did that happen?
Why am I standing next to my bed in my pajamas?
I just slept. "
Pat Moore
"I just couldn't understand ... nobody could. You couldn't imagine what had happened."
Mary Perillo
»There was that explosion and now I understand the expression: My knees are shaking.
I stood there and my legs were shaking like crazy. "
The southern tip of Manhattan: Exactly 20 years ago, almost 3,000 people died as a result of an act of terror in front of Marry Perillos and Pat Moore's front door.
Even then, the two women lived in the immediate vicinity of the Word Trade Center: at 125 Cedar Street.
When Mary Perillo noticed that the twin towers were on fire, she ran out of the house to a friend a few blocks away.
That saved her life.
Shortly after ten, Perillo felt a shock.
Mary Perillo,
Video Artist “It sounded like a train was racing towards you.
Boom, boom, boom, like it's getting faster and faster.
These were the floors that collapsed on each other.
We all instinctively fled to the bathroom because there were no windows.
We were four people and four dogs in that tiny bathroom.
And when we got out again, the windows were black.
Not gray, or dark like at night, but pitch black.
When I left the house, the dust was already ankle-high.
It was dead quiet. "
At the time, nobody could have known that New Yorkers would suffer from the long-term effects of this dust for decades to come.
However, it quickly became clear who was behind the crime: Al Qaeda terrorists had steered the two passenger planes into the two towers of the World Trade Center.
The images from that time still haunt Mary Perillo.
Mary Perillo,
Video Artist “I saw people jumping, but my mind decided, people were falling ... or they were jumping, I don't know because it burned and they couldn't get out.
But my mind made filing cabinets out of them.
I would have told you back then that people threw things out of the windows.
My mind just couldn't handle what it was seeing.
We were all traumatized.
My brain wanted to tell me that I didn't see what I saw - I was really traumatized. "
The two towers of the World Trade Center collapsed, but miraculously the house on Cedar Street stopped.
But when the residents returned for the first time in days, they found their apartments devastated.
Pieces of rubble had hit the facade, and all the windows had splintered as a result of the pressure wave.
For months, Perillo dragged rubble from her loft on the eighth floor - unknowingly, endangering her health.
Mary Perillo, video artist
»Everything was piled up to a meter high in the corners: rubble and a lot of toxic dust.
I later got it checked out and it had a pH like pipe cleaner.
And I went in and out very often.
«
Five floors below, on the third floor, lives Pat Moore, a friend of Mary Perillo.
Pat Moore, jewelry designer
"Here you can see the traces of the scrap that hit the closet."
Pat Moore, jewelry designer
»We came back and couldn't believe it: we had left the house and had a picture of it in front of our eyes.
And when we returned we saw the destruction.
It looked like Europe after the war. "
Pat Moore and her husband took these pictures just a few days after September 11th in their apartment.
Andrew Jurinko, painter
»That was my painting studio
for 24 years.
Our television - I'm curious whether it will still work.
Our cabinet for videos and cassettes.
Here we see the rest of the World Trade Center on Liberty Street. "
A team from SPIEGEL TV had already visited the couple in 2006, on the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks.
Pat's husband is now dead: Andy Jurinko, a nationally known painter, died ten years ago of pancreatic cancer.
Pat Moore, jewelry designer
“The cancer he died of is now being identified by doctors as a possible 9/11 episode.
But whether he really died from it or not - it somehow doesn't make any difference to me.
He's been dead for 10 years and I miss him very much.
I miss my ally. "
Pat Moore kept many memorabilia in her husband's studio.
Pat Moore, jewelry designer
»Back then, I always wore this Bed, Bath and Beyond bag around my head to protect my hair.
I still have his painter's clothes here.
He painted in it.
In your shoes and pants. "
Instead of the Twin Towers, the new One World Trade Center now dominates the New York skyline.
Mary Perillo has only known her neighborhood that calmly since the pandemic.
Even before Corona, thousands of tourists flocked to the memorial at Ground Zero every day.
Mary Perillo, video artist
“Small families, okay.
A group of friends - I get it.
But when 80 people come, all wearing yellow T-shirts that say, "Tennessee Loves Jesus," and they come here in busloads and they don't know how to act on the street, I sometimes put my elbows out.
It feels too much like Disneyland.
I think it should be more devout here. "
Mary Perillo will not attend the official memorial service on September 11th, she has never done that.
When she opens her living room window, that's how she hears the most important part of the ceremony, she says.
Mary Perillo, video artist
»I have my very own ritual on the anniversary. I listen to the names of the victims being read out. 3000 names, that takes a while. They are read aloud by family members. And this interpersonal connection is particularly strong for me. "