Veronika Bednářová is a journalist, 
Fulbright alumna and one of the few Czechs, who personally experienced the tragic events of 9/11 in New York City. After graduating from Film and Theatre Studies at Charles University in Prague, Veronika won a Fulbright scholarship to continue her education at the New York University Tisch School of the Arts. Today, Veronika writes for the Czech weekly magazine Reflex, and she teaches Travel Writing at New York University in Prague.
Veronika Bednářová wrote about her 9/11 experience the following text for her book “Má americká krása” (My American Beauty), published by Ringier/Daranus in 2006. Below Veronika's preface written this week, we publish the English translation of the original text acquired with the author’s permission.
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New Ground Zero
During this year’s reverent anniversary ceremony of 9/11, I wish I could be at the National September 11 Memorial in Lower Manhattan - two giant pools that copy the foundations of the former Twin Towers, with the inscribed names of the 2,983 victims.
I would be honored to talk again with New York firefighters, who annually commemorate the events of 9/11 with two separate moments of silence in front of their stations, exactly at the times when the North and then the South Tower fell down. Three hundred forty-three of them did not return home after their emergency assistance at Ground Zero.
I would also like to see the new shining 104-story and blue One World Trade Center building, nicknamed “Freedom Tower.” It is simply beautiful. Opened in 2014, as the tallest building in the Western hemisphere and with its height of 1776 feet, it refers to the origin of the United States Declaration of Independence. Many experts claim that this building is the safest in the world, and I only hope that this epithet does not refer just to the typical (and today already expired) American megalomania.
On 9/11 of 2001, the day that you will read about, the City of New York was enjoying a gorgeous late summer and also the remains of the carefree Clinton era of the late 90s that I experienced in the U.S. as a student and professional on a Fulbright grant.
I do not want to talk about my 9/11 memories to everyone, and I can't even do that. Nevertheless, it is crucial to commemorate these events, as a new generation of people have come of age since that time. The world definitely has not become a safer place to live, but we should still keep striving for that.
I would also like to see the new shining 104-story and blue One World Trade Center building, nicknamed “Freedom Tower.” It is simply beautiful. Opened in 2014, as the tallest building in the Western hemisphere and with its height of 1776 feet, it refers to the origin of the United States Declaration of Independence. Many experts claim that this building is the safest in the world, and I only hope that this epithet does not refer just to the typical (and today already expired) American megalomania.
On 9/11 of 2001, the day that you will read about, the City of New York was enjoying a gorgeous late summer and also the remains of the carefree Clinton era of the late 90s that I experienced in the U.S. as a student and professional on a Fulbright grant.
I do not want to talk about my 9/11 memories to everyone, and I can't even do that. Nevertheless, it is crucial to commemorate these events, as a new generation of people have come of age since that time. The world definitely has not become a safer place to live, but we should still keep striving for that.
Veronika Bednářová, September 6, 2021, Prague
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The Day Nobody Read the Papers
Monday evening, September 10th. My friend Julia moved to New York a week ago. We’re walking down in Manhattan around the World Trade Center, and she shows me the fountain between the Twins. “I eat lunch here every day,” she tells me proudly, and I smile a little at her excitement over an obvious little thing. An impressive obvious thing. Four towers, sixteen palms. In the middle, a fountain where children are playing. I have no idea I’ll never see the fountain and the Twins again. And Julia?
On this day I head out to buy juice, because the manager of the student house where I live in Greenwich Village has a throat infection, and the doctor prescribed apple and grape juice treatment alongside the antibiotics. I stick a dozen boxes in the refrigerator for Angela. With a hundred-plus fever, she smiles and thanks me. On Monday night CNN interviews a mind reader who’s said to let people speak with the dead. I turn off the television, thinking how nonsense like this is below CNN’s pay grade.8:45 a.m.
I hear shouting outside, but I’m in the shower. My neighbor James is shouting from the ninth floor: on CNN they’re saying an airplane has crashed into one of the Twins. “Probably just a rerun of the CNN mind reader,” I tell myself. But I quickly get dressed, since the Twins are easy to see from the sidewalk. They already both have red welts that look like sunset clouds. But it’s not sunset. It’s a gorgeous warm Indian summer morning in New York. One of the prime days of the year. I smell smoke in the air. I go back inside, where our graying doorman is moving a television into the entryway. I watch CNN with him — watching the same view as I see live a few yards in front of me. The reporter carefully states that it’s unlikely to be an accident. The streets are full of people fleeing the Twins. I don’t yet suspect how much business awaits CNN’s speaker with the dead.
10:00 a.m.
Standing in front of my home on the corner of Morton and Greenwich, I watch the terrified faces of passersby. “Need help down there?” I stupidly ask a suit who’s just dashed his phone onto the ground. The phone shatters into screams. From me and everyone around. “There’s just one left, there’s just one left,” sobs a man with a baby in his arms right next to me. I can see New York will never again be the confident, independent, self-assured city I’ve come to know. Everyone on the street is crying. Where have I seen this before… “In movies, just in the movies,” the crowd is repeating, amazed at the drastic Hollywood perfection. It’s the world’s strangest sight. A Twin without its Twin.
10:05 a.m.
They’re evacuating the White House. I’m unaware. I carefully head toward where two identical towers stood—it’s about a quarter - hour away at a trot. Apocalypse. People barely catch their breath, cry, rush by, try to make calls, leave the shocking panorama behind. The smoke dulls our senses. “When I heard the explosion, I put my suit over my head and ran down the stairs,” a boy in jeans and a T-shirt tells me. He’s holding his ash - covered black suit carrier in his hands. “Thank God I’m alive,” he smiles at me and keeps walking uptown — toward Manhattan — as he doesn’t know where else to go. I have my first realization that this is an uncivilized attack on civilized people who were just coming to work in the morning, having coffee, turning on their PC, and getting ready for work, until one of their own country’s airplanes robbed them of at best their office and at worst their life. I later learn that the people who barely escaped with their lives then walked up to eight hours — to Brooklyn, to Queens, to their homes. I wonder where Julia is — she lives in Long Island, so she has to take a boat that isn’t running. She’s not answering her phone or email.
The din keeps rising. Helicopters, ambulances, police cars, fire trucks, traffic jams. Most people are trying in a panic to call their loved ones and say they’re OK. The roar grows louder the more I approach the epicenter. Most people don’t know where to go; they’re just rushing from the remaining Twin out of self-preservation. They’re crying, but they’re not shouting or hysterical. It’s a bombing without the bomb shelter. People are covering their mouths.
I’m treading carefully: and then it happens. A new earthquake wave. Giant chunks of rock shoot from the sky. The crowd thickens; the lady beside me steps on my foot and screams as if she’s dying. As if? I turn back and rush home: I’m scared.
11:00 a.m.
“Thank God you’re here, we’re evacuating people from five dorms, you have to help me,” says Angela, coughing away. Her fever has risen, and I tell myself we’re lucky our dorm is north past Canal Street — past the danger zone. I can tell by the taped-up traffic light that showed up on Canal Street. The subway’s stopped; the tunnels and bridges are closed. I spend an hour trying calls, but I can’t call out, not to New York nor the rest of the US, let alone to Europe. All the lines are tied up. Julia’s too. The evacuated dorms look like somebody’s just announced an air raid. Students from the affected areas are heading up to the city on foot. The rest of the unhoused are headed to us, and the first signs of shock are setting in. Many are scared — their parents work on Wall Street. Children from good, rich families. Bankers’ children. The bankers must be destroyed — that’s what the terrorists must have been thinking. I’m looking at these boys and girls in their sweatpants and gym shoes and actually feeling sorry for America. Always helping somebody. The Marshall Plan, an earthquake here, a flood there, help us since you’re so strong, help the whole world, you can afford it… and in the end we all just gripe that they’re only fatties sitting at their TVs eating burgers. Being the best while playing it cool is a ton of work. For now, we’re all playing it cool successfully.
12:15 p.m.
I want a drink of water, and so I quickly turn on the faucet. The water is black. With soot. This is when I remember a “What to do in an earthquake” leaflet I’d read — you buy up a reserve of food and drinks. On the sidewalk I meet a group of terrified people who’d been rescued; they beg me to go buy water with them, as they left all their things at the office. I try asking where they’re from, but they stammer and just repeat that it took them 45 minutes to get out. Refugees are asking for water as they pass by our entryway. The smoke is bothering and dehydrating us all. I head to the D’Agostino grocery, ready to grab a couple gallons of water and plastic cups and then just bring these supplies to the table at our entrance. And then I end up far from a hero. Bedlam reigns at the grocery. There’s not a drop of water left on the shelves. People have bought out not just the gallons, but plastic bottles of all sizes. And food. So much food. In the end I find two crates of awful sodas, and since there are no carts or baskets left, an old married couple offers me space in their cart. In the checkout line, which snakes through the whole supermarket, I tell them I’m struggling to call my family in Europe. A six-hour time difference. The girl next to me says the Middle East is definitely behind this. The cart couple notes that Israel has a seven-hour time difference. And then let on that they live in Jerusalem. “We were supposed to fly tonight,” the wife says equably over their full cart. They are both calm, unshocked, which I immediately tell them. They benevolently reply: we’ve been living in all this so long we don’t even notice. The wife then adds: “Over the years I’ve learned two things: take care and help whoever I can.” So in the end I decide that buying soda isn’t the worst way to spend an hour. Meanwhile the passersby have also drunk all of Angelina’s throat-curing juice. The only juice we can offer right now. In a fully cut-off Manhattan.
2:00 p.m.
Blood from Boston. Donate blood. A blood shortage. Overflowing hospitals. Our Greenwich hotel offers beds for doctors, nurses, and aides from the nearby St. Vincent Hospital. I supply the gym with six pillows I’ve had waiting half a year in my apartment for me to take them to the cleaners. Don’t put off until tomorrow… I clothe the un-cleaned pillows in clean cases — they’ll serve just as well. Breathing is hard outside; our eyes are welling up. The streets are suspiciously empty.
4:00 p.m.
Building Seven, where the World Trade Center was, is on fire. The third tower, the “small” one, is just over 50 stories. I’m still unaware of how many dead must be down there, because I keep meeting the living, who need help. I’m not thinking of those who no longer need help. “This is much, much worse than Pearl Harbor,” a man from JPMorgan Chase tells me. “And much worse than in Vietnam…” In short, America’s never seen anything like this. We Europeans, educated by discussions with survivors of World Wars I and II, bombings, the camps, tattooed numbers on arms, nationalization, the mass incarcerations of the fifties, the tanks of sixty-eight… The “Normalization” seventies… Students beaten on the street in eighty-nine… I’m shaken by what happened in New York, and yet I know this is a continent’s coming of age. “The start of a war,” they whisper wherever people tell of today’s events.
The faltering Building Seven falls around half past five.
8:00 p.m.
A changing of the guard at our dorm-hotel. Demos comes to replace our graying doorman. Demos, short for Demosthenes, is a darling—a Greek immigrant living here for over twenty years. He’s a stocky, smiling, smoking man who won’t put up with just anything. I peruse his ashy face and carefully ask how he spent his day. “I had my day shift, the dorm on Broom Street, so, we were evacuating until three, and then instead of a nap, I went to check up on my two friends at the fire station, see if they need some help. They’re both missing. And one’s set to get married in November,” Demosthenes intones, as if he were awaiting my help.
I’ve long known that firefighters have a special place in America’s history — they’re national heroes. When a red fire truck rides past and honks, everyone stops and salutes. Mayor Giuliani organizes parties for fire chiefs’ birthdays, baby showers, and wedding anniversaries. At Demos’ behest a “messaging event” brews in the entryway: the giant fire station is just a short way from us, and every day I see those wide-shouldered men in dark-blue uniforms strolling the city. Dorm residents are writing messages. Childish, but effective… “You’re heroes.” “We love you.” “Thank you, you saved our lives.” “We’re thinking of you.” “We’ll never forget.” At this point two hundred dead firefighters are confirmed, including the Chief of Department and his deputy.
Wednesday September 12th, 1:00 a.m.
We spend the night at the TV. The city sleeps, for what is surely the first time since 1929. Today, nobody read the papers. Because Americans didn’t need to write their history. They were living it. They lived a desperate, real, defining terror like from the movies. And now it’s a glorious crystal-clear night. The stars are out. I’m sitting on the steps, and there’s nothing to my right. Nothing but a huge black hole.
7:00 a.m.
Still no sign of Julia. Six hundred people slept here last night instead of the usual three hundred. The whole first floor is occupied by doctors, nurses, and other St. Vincent personnel. People need more pillows, blankets, food. I hear they slept in the entryway. I make fried eggs for a few dozen people and then immediately abandon my service to America for a trip to the press center.
9:00 a.m.
I reach Pier 40 with few problems. This is the port by the Hudson River where reporters are gathering. I’ve long felt that the same types of people do the same jobs worldwide — the American journalists’ faces and clothing feel familiar to me. They jot down notes with speed and concentration. We wait resignedly for a truck with an escort to take us a little closer to the site of yesterday’s explosion. They say they’ll only take us up to Canal Street. I know from yesterday that that’s not much. Several thousand people have begun assembling: New Yorkers have the day off and have come to cheer. They have flags and clap for every ambulance, every fire truck. Many are among those who’ve left their apartments with cats, dogs, parakeets, fish, and snakes down in Manhattan. They’re very scared for their pets.
1:00 p.m.
The bus finally comes to take us to Canal Street. It’s as I expected. We meet deathly tired firefighters and nurses with their heads covered to protect from the dust. We’re all wearing face masks, and the reek of smoke is worsening. “It’s covered in dead bodies,” one of the volunteers carefully tells me of the spot where a fountain had felt so natural to me two days before.
3:00 p.m.
I’m walking through Greenwich Village, which I find the prettiest part of New York, around the West Quarter, Christopher Street, and Sixth Avenue. People are sitting in garden restaurants, some of them eating, some just nervously sipping coffee. No alcohol. They’re going over yesterday’s events. I hear no laughter anywhere. Flowers, thank-you letters, photos of the Twins, photos of the missing, more tears, embraces, fragrant candles that briefly drown out the smoke-stink. No traces anywhere of revenge, rage, belligerence. We’ve already grown used to the sound of rescue helicopters.
5:30 p.m.
Still the same border on the corner of West Street, by Pier 40. Journalists no longer even have a dedicated workplace; they just stand mixed in with residents of Lower Manhattan who are trying desperately to get home. Today they’re promising for the third time that a bus will take us down closer to the “war zone,” when a charming volunteer with circles under her eyes comes up and says: “We’re sorry, but nobody else can come down today, it’s extremely dangerous there, another building will probably fall,” she says pleasantly, and the man beside me stands in shock. “If that’s Number Five, my house is done for,” he says with a distant look, then tells me long tales of his two cats, normally fed by his wife — who’s stuck in Chicago — and how he’s unsure if he gave the cats enough to drink. While describing the cats (angora, light-furred, with dark paws, spoiled), he notes in passing that two of his friends are missing. I’ve never seen so many men crying.
6:00 p.m.
I have the selfish thought that I never even had a chance to properly enjoy Windows of the World. This restaurant was on the 107th floor in one of the towers. Besides the divine view, they served fantastic Pilsner Urquell beer. I’m feeding someone’s cats that have, God knows how, made their way into my apartment, and CNN is reporting the fall of Building Five, another tower of the former World Trade Center. They haven’t broadcast any ads on TV in two days.
9:00 p.m.
A report flashes by on MSNBC about trained dogs confirming the presence of a bomb under the Empire State Building—the tallest building in New York since Tuesday. Several streets are evacuated lightning-fast nearby the ESB; people with suitcases and children are standing around. In half an hour it’s confirmed the bomb was just a false alarm. I walk a few steps to Hudson Street and pick up oranges and bananas from an Arab seller at Ray’s Deli. He gives me them for free. I carry them off to Pier 40, where rescue volunteers accept them wordlessly. The helicopters drone on. More and more people are offering help, but some are being sent home. The fewer people, the safer.
Midnight, Wednesday/Thursday
I’m sitting out on the steps. Mr. Lesko has just come for his daughter Jocelyne. Mr. Lesko is from Pennsylvania and lives half an hour from where the fourth plane crashed yesterday. But he still wants to transport his daughter “to safety.” So Mr. Lesko has made the trek to join us in front of Greenwich Hotel and is loading up his daughter and her bike. James, who called me yesterday morning with the news of the flaming tower (it feels like months since then) watches in envy. Then he says: “Hm, I’m from Washington DC, heading home wouldn't be much safer than staying here.” On the other hand, the fake bomb in Empire State, which is as close to home as the Twins were, hasn’t brightened our mood much. We still have guests from evacuated dorms, and deathly tired doctors and nurses upstairs. The smoke, smell, and fine ash have gotten worse again. I have no news of Julia.
Thursday, September 13th, 7:00 a.m.
The water bottles they’re offering us on Pier 40 are covered in dust. They let us into the forbidden zone on foot. I go with a photographer for Life Magazine. He looks indifferent. The boundary is at the corner of Greenwich and Reade, a few hundred yards from the trade center’s ruins. This boom gate is a firm line. Beyond it lies war. “Hotel Millennium is about to collapse, and we don't know yet whether to help it or wait for it to fall on its own,” the infinitely calm black Lieutenant Martinez tells me by the gate, and I think how long it’s been since I’ve slept.
10:00 a.m.
Thirty-five-year-old fireman Joseph D. from Philadelphia boarded a train yesterday to ride in and help. We gaze together at the ruins of World Trade Center Building 7, which fell yesterday. Joe is nearly bug-eyed: “You know, in Philly the worst I saw was a husband setting fire to his wife’s house and watching it from across the street. That was the worst fire in my life so far,” he tells me in front of this hellscape that no-one’s shown us yet.
8:00 p.m.
I finally hear from Julia, stuck somewhere with relatives, alive. The first foreign journalists are entering the country, and I've heard Czech photographer Jan Šibík is in Detroit, as one of the first to fly into the US since the tragedy. I get on a train and ride to Connecticut. For the first time in my life, I don’t regret leaving New York. Because I’m getting lost there.
Veronika Bednářová, September 2001, New York, Lower Manhattan
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