[somber music playing] [airplane engine] See it? Yeah. Am I just seeing things? Oh, jeez. Oh, they’re people. Oh. Oh, jeez, they’re people. They’re people. They’re people. [quiet music playing] I’m going to
take us right here to this tree where there
in shade and there is sun, so you could have
which ever you prefer. So we don’t get
in everyone’s way, if we can stay over here
on the left hand side, we’ll be in good shape. The memorial is
designed for you to make physical
contact with it, to actually touch the names. So do not feel that the
appropriate behavior that shows respect
is to be standoffish. It is not. The only thing
that we do ask — and I really doubt that any
of you would have the impulse to do this anyhow — do not put things on the name. Coats, elbows, cups,
bags, anything like that. The other thing I
want to say to you is this was truly — you’re
an international group of people — this was the World
Trade Center. People from over 90 countries
died here that morning. They were Christians, Jews,
Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists. Some made their way in
the world washing dishes, others ran powerful companies,
but almost every single one of them dies that morning
because they do something that all of us do with
most of our lives — they woke up and
they went to work. [somber music playing] Excuse me. Hello. Hello, hello, hello. There’s no smoking
in the plaza. No smoking in the plaza. That’s quite all right. Thank you. So I want to talk to
you about the pools. Directly in front of
you is the south pool. The south pool stands in the
footprint of the South Tower, World Trade Center number two. So that’s exactly where
World Trade Center number two stood. Can everyone see
that line of trees that goes around the pool? That line of trees
represents the outer wall of the building. So that means in
a few minutes when we go up to see the falls
and you go past those trees, you will be standing in what
was once the lobby of World Trade Center number two. You’re going to see the falls. The falls come out in
individual rivulets, one for each person
killed on 9/11. Goes down about 20 feet
or so into a huge pool. In the center of the
pool, another opening goes on another 10 feet or so. No matter how
hard you try, you can’t see the bottom of that
opening because it’s a void, and the void is a
symbol of the emptiness that we feel here
over the loss of life. I’m sure all of you can see
the water under the names. That water comes
directly from the pool. What someone will do,
visiting a loved one — and please feel free to
do the very, very same — take their hand,
put it in the water, rub their hand over a name. Water, of course,
a symbol of life. And notice how the
names are on the wall. They are not arranged
in alphabetical order. For example, people who
worked in the same office in this building,
they’re together. Firefighters out on the
same firehouse, together. Police officers out of
the same police precinct, together. We call that
meaningful adjacencies. People together in
death just the way they were together in life. I have a stupid question. The names of the killers. Are they — Absolutely not. Not. Absolutely not. Yeah. The only place
you’ll find them is if you should
go into the museum, there’s a special part
that deals with Al Qaeda. [somber music playing] [water cascading] [somber music playing]
Damn, that German dad explaining to his young daughter what happened.
"Were they beautiful?"
"Very beautiful buildings... I'll show you when you're older."
I liked this short doc very much. You can tell how some people do treat it as a somber and meaningful experience and some who were either to young or were not born when 9/11 happened. Every time they showed someone taking a smiling selfie I wanted to punch them in the face. Would you take a smiling selfie at the front gates of Auschwitz? I don’t think so.
Loved the dad explaining to his daughter what happened.
My next question is what does the custodian do with the tiny flags? I could clearly see he wasn’t throwing them away.
Thanks for sharing.