EDITORIAL: Mourning the victims of 9/11 (09/08/02)

EDITORIAL

Mourning the victims of 9/11

In a few days the entire United States, and along with it much of the international community, will mark the solemn first anniversary of one of the darkest days in history: the terrorist attacks on the U.S. perpetrated on September 11, 2001.

As we recall that day, our thoughts go back to the horror as it unfolded before our eyes, and our prayers go out for all the innocent victims of this heinous crime against Americans, as well as people who traced their roots to 115 different countries.

The number of victims at the World Trade Center (WTC) stands at 2,807: 1,379 were confirmed dead, 1,350 were declared dead and 78 continue to be listed as missing. Another 233 were killed in the attack on the Pentagon and the plane crash in Pennsylvania. September 11, 2001, was the second bloodiest day in U.S. history - after the battle of Antietam during the Civil War (in which more than 23,000 were killed, wounded or missing). The largest number of victims at the Twin Towers were between the ages of 30 and 42 - cut down in the prime of their lives, having attained a certain level of accomplishment, but with so much to look forward to. Many of them were the parents of young children.

This newspaper reported that among the dead was Ivan (John) Skala, 31, of Clifton, N.J., a police officer of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and a member of the Ukrainian American Youth Association, and Oleh Wengerchuk, 56, of Long Island, a transportation designer with the Washington Group International whose office was on the 91st floor of 2 World Trade Center. Later we reported that, according to Ukraine's diplomats in New York, there were Ukrainian citizens who died in the WTC attacks, and two of them were known: Yurii Mushinsky and Volodymyr Savinkin (their names were later listed with different spellings on official lists.)

An online search of The New York Times' groundbreaking "Portraits of Grief" feature revealed nine names when the keywords "Ukraine" or "Ukrainian" were entered. The "portraits" of the dead are heart-wrenching and taken together they give readers a clue to the scale of the loss suffered on 9/11 by families, friends, colleagues, neighbors, our country and the world.

Among those identified as from Ukraine was Vladimir Savinkin, 21, who came to the U.S. six years earlier from Odesa, attended Pace University at age 16, and was an accountant at Cantor Fitzgerald. Iouri Mouchinski, 55, arrived in New York from Ukraine in 1994; he was a civil engineer who worked as a handyman at the WTC. Marina Gertsburg, 25, who emigrated from Odesa, was enrolled in a master's program at Baruch College and was a junior manager at Cantor Fitzgerald - she had just joined the company on September 4, a week before 9/11. Tatyana Bakalinskaya, 43, arrived in New York from Ukraine in 1994, and worked as a hostess at the offices of Marsh & McLennan on the 93rd floor. Others we found were: Boris Khalif, 30, and Igor Zukelman, 29, both described as immigrants from Ukraine; and Simon V. Weiser, identified as a Jew born in Kyiv in 1936.

There are others whose last names sound Ukrainian on the somber gray list of victims that filled two pages in small type in a recent issue of The New York Times, and surely there are still others whose last names do not reveal their background. We mourn them along with the Americans, the Japanese, the Indians, the British, the Dominicans, the Guyanese and all the others of so many varied ethnic backgrounds.

As Secretary of State Colin Powell said last September, "Terrorism is a crime against all civilization. Terrorism is a crime against all humanity. It knows no ethnic, religious or other national or geographic boundaries..."

Now, one year later, we Ukrainian Americans respectfully bow our heads in memory of all the victims of 9/11 - a horrific event on American soil that shook the world.

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