Haunting and meaningful museum opens at WTC

The author, a senior at SKA High School in Hewlett Bay Park, is an intern at The Jewish Star. On Monday, she accompanied her father, a first responder, to the 9/11 Memorial Museum.

Silence could be heard throughout the rooms of the 9/11 Memorial Museum. Sadness was written all over the faces of the visitors who had seen the World Trade Center fall to the ground.

Rescuers of September 11 were permitted to enter the museum, prior to the opening to the public. The rescuers were walking through the museum, feeling the destruction and reconstruction of the buildings that tore down the lives of thousands of innocent people. The pictures were devastating. The recordings of the hijackers on the planes were piercing. The voices of the passengers as they called their loved ones were heartbreaking.

Buildings crumbling to the ground, people jumping with uncertainty of the life beyond the flames, smoke consuming the air as the doomed gasp for one last breath. People falling to the ground covered by doors, windows and coworkers. People cover their wounds with trembling hands, trying to heal the pain that would never end. Eyes uncontrollably tearing of dust, smoke and fear. Parents worried that their children’s faces will never be seen again. Children smiling in school thinking that their parents will return to them and protect them. Sirens and screams bouncing off of the collapsing buildings. Damage to society, to limbs and to psychological stability.

The walls were dark and the photographs were dreary, but within every picture there is beauty.

Smoke seizing a sky that seemed finely painted with multiple shades of blue, said artist Spencer Finch, who designed one of the walls with 2,983 blue squares, using his memory of the sky on that dreadful morning. Devastation could be seen in the eyes of onlookers of the tragedy. Artwork created by children mourning those who had been lost. Blankets and quilts designed by women with focus and intricacy. Walls consisting of almost three thousand faces, a tribute to the memory that will never be lost. The steel rows from the building’s architecture, now bent into deformed shapes, are displayed to portray the force at which the buildings collapsed. A fragment that stood on top of the North Tower, an elevator motor and the steps that the people used to descend the burning building, are all on display.

Walking from room to room, looking upon walls of photographs and quotes, artifacts and vehicles, the reconstruction of the World Trade Center was finally coming into view. Buildings were rising, tears were lessening and the world started over.

It’s been almost 15 years since the tragedy of the World Trade Center took the innocence of New York and the lives of almost 3,000 people. Now, the museum honors the lives lost and the commemoration that will continue forever.