The Smell of September 11

Townhall.com ^ | September 11, 2018 | Marina Medvin

[Kaslin]

I woke up on September 12, 2001, to rays of sunshine beaming on my face. It looked beautiful outside. It was a brand new day, and the terrible dream about the day prior seemed to be over. I walked over to my bedroom window and I opened it.

I inhaled the air, expecting the crisp, fresh smell of a New York September morning, a scent that I loved so much. But my heart quickly sank. I smelled something different. I smelled something that will never leave my memory for as long as I shall live. I smelled burnt flesh.

The reality sent shivers down my spine. The gray ashes that covered my friends and neighbors, who spent six hours walking the bridge from Manhattan back home to Staten Island on the day prior, the ashes that coated their bodies head-to-toe, were not just ashes from the fallen buildings. They were also the ashes of the people inside of the buildings.

“It smells like Auschwitz,” I whispered to myself, as I looked back at the stack of Holocaust books next to my bed. My eyes filled with tears. I closed that window and just stared out at the world for a while. I realized that yesterday wasn’t a dream. September 11 did happen.

I will never forget that moment.

It was 17 years ago. But that moment is as clear in my mind as a moment from 17 minutes ago. It was the moment when I, a 17-year-old at the time, grew up. It was the moment that I realized that the atrocities of the past that I have been reading about are not confined to the past. It was the moment that I realized that the present and the future could be as cruel as the past. It was the moment that I understood that on the day prior, New York had met evil.

The evil that turned thousands of people into ashes was radical Islam.

That evil permeates our world still. We continue to battle ominous Islamic fundamentalism to this day. We have been unable to defeat the ideology of destruction. But we cannot rest until we do.

We must never forget. We must never ameliorate the evil. We must persist. The ideology of life and freedom, the philosophy of American values, must win over the ideology of death, the doctrine of radical Islam.

[wbarmy]

I was in Brooklyn, near Park Slope, visiting a Baptist Church. I can remember that horrible smell also. My other strong memory is the silence on the streets. No one was honking their car horns or playing loud music, everything was quiet as people listened to their radios for news.

[Nateman]

You won’t beat it by calling it ‘Radical Islam’. Islam is the problem. Period.

[Biggirl]

I was working at Manchester Community College in Manchester, CT on the phone with my late mother when she told me she was watching wha looked like a 🎥 movie. That was when Tower 1 of the WTC was hit.

[HypatiaTaught]

Excellent post.

[Biggirl]

ISLAM is from the devil, period.

[Biggirl]

Thank-you for the excellent posting.

[PigRigger]

From my Profile:

I will never forget seeing those fleeing uptown from lower Manhattan

I will never forget the blood, tears, and dust smeared across their faces

I will never forget the silence a crowd of thousands can make when seeing fellow New Yorker’s die

I will never forget seeing the FDNY and NYPD rush to their deaths

I will never forget my first train back into Manhattan - viewing a black cloud over where the towers once stood

I will never forget the prayers and sobs as we all looked out the windows as we passed

I will never forget the smell that lingered in the streets for weeks thereafter

[Kaslin]

Excellent Post

[miss marmelstein]

The smell of 9/12, and I remember it distinctly, was overwhelmingly chemical. Really, the night of 9/11; we had to keep the windows closed for days while the Towers smoked.

[tomkat]

Karen and her friend Judy and I drove down there a week afterward.
The girls went to a Yankees game, but I felt utterly compelled to stay and wander in lower Manhattan.
That smell was still in the air, and the dust of everything and everyone incinerated on that day of evil still clung to surfaces everywhere.


             

[Oldeconomybuyer]

9/11 Remembrance Archive:

https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/620413/posts

[LottieDah]

I walked from the U.S. Courthouse in lower Manhattan to my childhood home in Borough Park Brooklyn. Many Orthodox and Hassidic Jews live there now. As I waited on my old stoop for my sister and brother to get home our Jewish neighbor said, “it smells like Auschwitz”. She new the smell of incinerated flesh as she was a concentration camp survivor.

[Tonytitan]

You won’t beat it by calling it ‘Radical Islam’. Islam is the problem. Period.

I seriously doubt that King Jesus is sitting enthroned above the stars differentiating between Satan and Radical Satan. It's all Satan to Him. It's all Satan to me.

[Mr Ramsbotham]

Just by sheer chance I happened to be working alongside the mortuary operations on the Pentagon victims and was asked to help with the IT portion. My remembrance of 911 will always be associated with the smell of burnt flesh, hundreds of burned body parts, and the row after row of personal effects taken from the victims to be identified and returned to their families.

[I want the USA back]

Never forget, because the left/media has already changed it to “a few planes were out for a ride one day when suddenly buildings got in their way and they crashed. It had nothing to do with *slam.”

[Biggirl]

King Jesus KNOWS that we are dealing with a FALSE god and a FALSE prophet,like the FALSE prophets he warned against.

[Bonemaker]

“I inhaled the air, expecting the crisp, fresh smell of a New York September morning, a scent that I loved so much. “

That’s her idea of a scent to love? More like a stench.

[Qiviut]

“The Falling Man” documents an aspect of the horrors of 9-11 hidden from the public by the media. I watch this documentary every September 11 and I remember and I cry - not as much as I did 9/11/2001, but the tears are still fresh. I have not forgotten, nor will I ever.

9 11 The Falling Man 2006 Full Documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emYQEkc71iE

[The FIGHTIN Illini]

Thanks for the link. Never Ever Forget