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"The memory is kind of a gray fog."
"It welded me to the city."
"Suddenly you're in the middle of a horror movie that you don't know how it will end."
US correspondent Marc Pitzke was an eyewitness to the most terrible day in New York history.
At that time he was still working for Die Woche magazine and had been in New York for six years.
While taking a walk, he remembers how he experienced the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 in Manhattan as a reporter.
“Standing here now and talking about it is very different from sitting somewhere at your desk and writing about it. The feelings from back then come up again. This grief, the fear, it all comes up again. "
Marc's day began in Union Square - with a coffee to go and a round with Daisy the dog.
It was just after nine.
“You could see the World Trade Center from there, and you could see one of the towers smoking there. So there was smoke and people were standing here on the street and everyone was wondering: What's going on? My first thought was just: They are making a film, Bruce Willis, "Die hard", 5th sequel or something like that. "
“Then I ran in that direction and saw one tower collapse. And of course that was a bit like a horror movie. "
At Grace Church, the reporter saw the city go into crisis mode in the days that followed.
“There were spontaneous prayers, there were spontaneous blood donations, all within a day, two or three ... then the city united. In shock, in pain. I remember a sermon from the week when the pastor said: Where was God on Tuesday? Many people lost their faith in God or at least asked themselves the questions. "
Marc got the order from his editorial office in Hamburg to write down the events for the magazine and tried to make his way to the southern tip of Manhattan to the World Trade Center.
“It was a day like almost today. It was a clear blue sky. Warm. Beautiful summer day, late summer day. And the further south you went, the more you could smell the smoke. And it was like a thick fog. And you smelled paper, you smelled fire, you smelled all kinds of things that were pulverized in this rubble, smoke, fire in the broken towers, so it was a very strange feeling. "
“I also remember that on the very first day, in the evening, it started that you had posters everywhere on the traffic lights and masts and transformers and the kiosks:“ Missing Person ”. That really brought you closer to the extent of this catastrophe because you noticed: They were neighbors, they were acquaintances. Everyone somehow knew someone who was affected by it in the city. "
In the early afternoon Marc arrived at what was then the Saint Vincent Hospital in Greenwich Village, which is now a residential complex.
“Here the doctors took beds out with the sheets on and because they didn't have enough beds, office chairs with sheets on them and they were all lined up here on Seventh Avenue and the doctors all stood behind them and waited for that from downstairs, from World Trade Center the wounded come. The injured they can treat. But nobody came. And that was really the first time I noticed that it somehow stuck through my armor. And I sat over on the curb and cried a little and then kept going. "
The dead do not need first aid, wrote Marc later in his report.
Almost 3,000 people died in the rubble of the World Trade Center on September 11th.
It was only after two days that Marc managed to get into the restricted zone with a special police card.
Today we take the subway to Ground Zero.
The “World Trade Center” stop is now one of the most expensive train stations in the world after it has been rebuilt.
MAP: World Trade Center Subway Station
“We're basically standing in a cemetery here. This is the former World Trade Center subway station that was destroyed on September 11th and which was rebuilt. Years later, they found remains here, human remains that were then identified with DNA samples. And now here is a shopping center, a luxury shopping center, that too. "
Right next door: the 9/11 memorial.
Water basins are reminiscent of the floor plans of the north and south towers.
The names of all the victims are written on the parapets.
“I'm a bit ambivalent, I think these fountains are very well made. And right now it's like a memorial too. But it usually gets very crowded here. Under normal, non-pandemic circumstances, this is very, very full of tourists, selfies, selfie sticks, and it's kind of not nice. It's not pleasant. "
For a long time Marc would not have thought it was possible that life would come back to life here at all.
“Lower Manhattan after September 11th was dead. There was nothing here. Here all the shops were gone, all the shops gone, all the cafes gone, the hotels gone. And nobody wanted to settle here again because it was kind of a cemetery. And now here is the "Financial District" around the stock exchange, one of the most popular, liveliest areas in the whole city. So in this respect: I have learned how the city renews itself again and again and how I renew myself again and again. "
