It`s time for ten minutes of commercial free current events. This is CNN STUDENT NEWS.
Is this legit?
Patriot Day is marked every year in September. True. Not to be confused with Patriot Day,
which is held in April, Patriot Day is on September 11 of every year.
Patriot Day remembers the victims, the first responders, the families affected by the September
11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States. So does the National September 11 Memorial
Museum. It opens today in New York. First, for the families who were directly affected
by the attacks, and later for the public? CNN`s Kate Bolduan joined Joe Daniels, the
museum`s president for an emotional tour of the building.
These tridents were from the North Tower, they were covered in the aftermath of the
attacks. We brought them back here, and basically built the museum all around them.
Nearly 13 years after terrorists destroyed the Twin Towers killing almost 3,000 people
- the 911 Memorial Museum is set to open. A commemoration of the day America changed
forever.
You are not whitewashing it. This is the raw, dirty material.
Exactly. I mean this is the steel that bore the attacks.
The museum is built almost entirely underground. Some 70 feet down. It sits in the precise
footprint of the World Trade Center.
So, this is exactly where the South Tower started. And went up 1350 feet.
A striking display of the sheer scale of the destruction with poignant reminders of the
tragedy at every turn.
I mean this - this is unbelievable.
This is actually the front of this fire truck. This is the .
You wouldn`t know.
Wouldn`t know. And it`s completely burned out and destroyed.
Then there`s the retaining wall that remarkably held strong even when the Towers fell.
When the Towers came down, all that debris that was here, right in the space provided
bracing for that wall. And when that debris was clear, there was a big concern that the
wall would breach, it would flood Lower Manhattan.
It could have been so much worse, but this wall helped under all of that pressure.
Visitors will also walk alongside the survivor stairs.
Used by hundreds of people as the buildings are crumbling, running from the dust cloud
to escape to safety. And it`s for all our visitors to understand the story of survival.
And likely, one of the most emotional stops in the museum. This art installation mimics
the blue sky on that fateful morning. Behind it, the still unidentified remains of 911
victims, the move met with mixed emotion from their families.
A still shocking statistic is that 1100 family members never got any human remains back to
bury, never got to go through the ritual of laying their loved ones to rest.
It`s not a public space at all, only family members are allowed back behind the wall.
Right next door, a room dedicated to the lives of those lost.
Adjacent to this is the reflection room, which is so important, and why we can`t show it
and won`t show it, because the families get to see it first.
Exactly. That room isn`t - in area called "In Memoriam." And it`s a photographic portrait
of each and every one of the 2,983 victims. You see pictures, a father coaching his son`s
Little League team, a wedding. You see the lives that were lost that day and not just
about how they died, it`s who these people were.
Throughout the museum, chilling reminders of the day. Handmade flyers for the missing,
across a merging from the wreckage - everyday items simply left behind.
We helped through these autographs and images to tell that story of just - ti was panic,
and people were getting out as fast as they could.
And it doesn`t- it`s not just the shoes, it tells the shoes worn by this woman Linda.
I mean it`s -you are telling everything about that day.
And while the museum is vast, one small exhibit has been the biggest source of controversy.
Its focus, the terrorists themselves including the film criticized for not making a clear
enough distinction between Islam and al Qaeda.
There`s been a lot of criticism, why give any time to the terrorists?
You know, it`s one way to look at it, is you don`t build the Holocaust Museum and that`ll
be very clear that the Nazis were the ones who committed those atrocities. Al Qaeda was
an extremist terrorist group that essentially bastardized that religion for their own purposes.
But no one will come through this exhibit and in any way think that we are indicting
an entire religion, which we in no way are.
It seems very appropriate that you end here, at the last call.
And it again goes right back to resiliency. You`ve seen those messages of hope and remembrance
on this very tall column that`s still standing strong.