The terrorists killed their American dream: what do we know about the Russian-speaking victims of the 9/11 attacks

Relatives of those who died on September 11, 2001 are bound by the ties of the tragedy. Despite the fact that 21 years have passed, they still remember that terrible day in detail, reports “Radio Liberty".

On the morning of September 11, 2001, financier Alexander Lygin went up to the office of Cantor Fitzgerald on the 104th floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York. 46 minutes later, an American Airlines jet rammed the building five floors below. All emergency exits were cut off.

Not a single person who was on the upper floors could get out. Some managed to get through on mobile phones to say goodbye to loved ones. Cantor Fitzgerald rented from the 101st to 105th floors in the North Tower. This company ranks first in terms of the number of victims, all 658 employees of the company died. Alexander Lygin was 28 years old. On October 20, 2001, he was supposed to have a wedding with a Ukrainian girl.

A similar fate has 25-year-old Marina Herzberg from Odessa. She came to New York as a three-year-old baby. Marina was also in the office of Cantor Fitzgerald. She got the job just a week before the attacks. A graduate of the prestigious Peter Stuyvesant High School in New York and Binghampton College, a brilliant career awaited.

Attacks happen suddenly and take their victims by surprise.

Twelve of the dead were of Ukrainian origin: fireman Ivan Skala, who died in the South Tower saving people, Oleg Vengerchuk, who worked there, young policeman Russell Timoshenko, financier Alexander Braginsky, Lyudmila Ksido, Gennady Boyarsky, Elena Belelovskaya, Marina Herzberg, Yuri Mushinsky, Vladimir Savinkin, Boris Khalif, Igor Tsukerman, Tatyana Bakalinskaya. They came to New York from the former USSR and spoke the same language.

Marina's father Roman Herzberg came with his family to the United States in 1979. This year, on September 11, as usual in the morning, he will go to the memorial. ” At 16:00 pm we have our own ceremony in a park in Brooklyn, where there is a monument to our children. People of different nationalities died, and there are many private memorials. We built a separate memorial for the Russian-speaking families of those who died. Many people live in Brooklyn, and it's easier for them to come here. We have a covered area where people can sit and chat. So we meet there,” he said.

Ari Kagan is a member of the New York City Council for the 47th congressional district. He represents the interests of people in the Coney Island and Brighton Beach neighborhoods, where thousands of Russian-speaking immigrants from the former USSR live. Kagan arrived in the US from Belarus over 30 years ago.

On September 11, 2001, he worked in a newspaper, the editorial office was in lower Manhattan (next to the WTC towers). But it so happened that on that day there were elections to the city council, elections of the mayor, and he was supposed to cover these elections in the Russian-speaking community. Therefore, the editor asked Kagan to stay in Brighton and go there by 9 o'clock in the morning to the Jewish center, where there was a large polling station, to talk with Russian-speaking voters, to make a report on who they voted for.

“And I didn't go to Manhattan that day. When I arrived at 9 o'clock in Brighton, I saw televisions in electronics stores, and there was this horror on all the screens. At the beginning, people gathered, they could not believe at all that this was the reality of Manhattan, ”says Kagan.

“When I came to America, I worked at the beginning in the Jewish World newspaper, I then interviewed a man named Alex Braginsky. He then worked for a large financial company and was a volunteer in the Nayana, an organization that helps new immigrants, Kagan recalls. He came to Brooklyn and gave a free seminar for those who wanted to get a job in the financial industry. Alex was leading this seminar in the Jewish center of the Benson-Hurst quarter, and Kagan did a long interview with him.

“Who would have thought that on September 11, 2001, Braginsky would be holding a big Reuters conference on the 101st floor of one of the towers of the World Trade Center, where he then worked as vice president of marketing. Alex died in the first minutes of the attacks. And when I saw his name on the lists of the dead, I realized that I knew him,” says Kagan.

Vladimir Savinkin, 21, was one of the youngest employees at Cantor Fitzgerald

Together with his family, Vladimir moved to New York from Odessa in 1996 when he was 16 years old. He started out as a pizza delivery boy in Brooklyn, while studying with honors at Pace University in Manhattan. He worked in accounting offices and finally climbed to the 101st floor of the north tower of the World Trade Center.

Young Savinkin left his first love in Odessa. He missed home so much that, once in the US, he immediately began to save money for the return trip. That trip in 1997 lasted only two weeks. Savinkin's girlfriend found another, and Vladimir's relationship with his old friends went wrong. “It was an awakening journey,” his father says. - Vlad realized that Odessa was no more for him and that his new life was in America. He became extremely focused and never looked back.”

And in the tube - silence ...

A Radio Liberty correspondent visited the Savinkins' house in Brooklyn in 2011 and recorded Valery's account of the hours when he was desperately trying to get through to his son:

“About nine o'clock the chief came. And he says to me, “Listen, there is something like burning in the Twins.” I looked out the window, saw smoke, but I looked from the direction of the river. I did not see the side where the plane flew into. I just saw some smoke. Naturally, I immediately dialed his phone number. Nobody answered. And then I was thrown. I realized that things are bad. I ran to the train. It was not yet nine o'clock. That is, it was all between the first and second aircraft. And then I saw some light. And then only I realized that this was the second plane. From that moment on, I didn't know where to go. I ran along the shore and looked at what I saw. And called, and called, and called home.

I ran back to my office in the hope that Vladik would call me if the mobile connection was not working. That will call my landline. I sat down near the phone, tried not to leave, but everyone at work crowded around the TV. Although the same thing as on TV could be seen in the window. But there was something else on TV. It is clear that we are generally non-believers. But at such moments, at such moments you start to pray. On TV they showed how the south tower falls. The south tower fell first. And I prayed only that the north tower would not fall. I understood that someone was saving someone, but when the tower falls, there is no one to save. I only pray that the north tower will remain standing. And at that moment the order came that we all leave. We go outside. And here I see how the tower where my son worked is falling.”

Hope dies last

Valery Savinkin continued his story: “My wife and I went to Manhattan. Why did we go? Because we had hope. We have prepared postcards with a portrait of Vadik. We didn't know what happened. And so it could well be assumed that he went out to drink coffee at that moment. We, like everyone else, came up with ways to save him. I remember how my wife and I were sitting on the train, there were few people on the train, no one was going anywhere, especially to Manhattan. And so, our few fellow travelers in the train, looking at us, seemed to understand what had happened. So we hoped and put up these leaflets with his data: weight, height, portrait. These were some of the first flyers. Then there were a lot of them.”

Valery Savinkin, interviewed in 2011, is one of the founders of the Families of 11/2016 Victims group. Savinkin was also chairman of the Odessa community in New York. He passed away in March XNUMX. Now one of the major intersections in Brooklyn is named after him - the intersection of Coney Island Avenue with Brighton Beach Avenue.

On the subject: Anniversary of the 9/11 attacks: why their organizers have not yet been brought to justice

Shattered plans

Five floors above Vladimir Savinkin's office in the North Tower, a business breakfast was held in a chic restaurant on the 106th floor of the North Tower.

Alexander (Alex) Braginsky, a 38-year-old manager of the Reuters financial agency, was about to give a lecture on vocational training for newcomers to the Association of New Americans. Braginsky replaced a colleague who could not come that day. Like Vladimir Savinkin, Braginsky came to America from Odessa in 1979 at the age of 16 and made a quick career. Braginsky was happily married and lived with his wife in the wealthy city of Stamford, Connecticut.

Says Alex's mother, Nella Braginskaya, in 2011: “I'm going to work, my husband is too. And he says: “Oh, go look!” And I go into the living room, I think: “Is there nothing to do? You look at some kind of dog nonsense. What a stupid movie? And suddenly I see that this is not a movie, this is the World Trade Center. And I start calling Alex, find out where he is. I did not know that he was there, to tell him what was happening in the city, that he was unlikely to get home today, that there was misfortune. The answering machine replied that he would not be at work for two days, the conference was scheduled for two days. I start calling his boss. He says he doesn't know exactly where the conference is taking place.

They were afraid to say, they didn't know what was wrong with him. This just happened. He was on the 106th floor, and the plane crashed into the 84th. Alex's wallet was found the next day, September 12th. I gave them the wallet to the museum. There was his pass, credit cards, money. All this was crushed, mangled. I then realized that, apparently, Shurik jumped out of the window. That's how I feel, because they didn't find it. Firstly, he is not the kind of person who will wait, suffocate and die slowly. And the wallet was found on the second day, it is not clear how they found it. I understand that he also, of course, threw away the phone. We were very close. She knew all his secrets, he consulted about girls and friends. Well, we were just really close friends.

Nella Braginskaya lives with her husband Mikhail in the Staten Island area of ​​New York. Braginskaya made a lot of efforts to remember the September 11 tragedy not only in America, but throughout the world. With her active assistance in Jerusalem, not far from the Wailing Wall, a memorial plate to the victims of September 11 was installed. A park in the city of Haifa in Israel is named after Alex Braginsky.

The remains of more than 1100 people have never been found.

During the fall of the towers, crumbling concrete and metal crushed everything, including the bodies of the dead. Months later, all this was removed from the scene of the tragedy, and it turned out to be impossible to reliably identify their remains. The last identification of the deceased in the attacks was made in 2021 using the latest DNA technology.

“I could not believe and did not believe until they found a piece of Shurik - a bone 2 centimeters in size. I couldn't see it. It was wrapped in cellophane and tied with a black ribbon. I understand that this is either a kneecap or from another joint, because it is rounded like that. And I did not bury, I was still waiting, because all the time they found a piece. And one of our Russian speakers, in my opinion, buried three times. The third time they found the head, and they told my mother that they had found it.”

Earth instead of dust

In November 2001, the city began issuing death certificates based on the testimony of witnesses, and the Savinkin family received an urn with earth

The identifiable remains of the deceased Savinkin were discovered in 2002-2003 and buried in one grave. In 2007, a memorial plaque to Savinkin was installed at secondary school No. 83 in his native Odessa.

Alex Braginsky was the only child. The Braginsky family received $800 in compensation for their son. His mother donated $000 to Queens College to have a conference room named after him and set up a scholarship fund in his name. At first everything went smoothly, but then Braginskaya found out that the college had not awarded scholarships since 200. She threatened legal action. And in response, she received a letter with a counter threat that if she initiates a lawsuit, then the remaining money will be placed in an escrow account. And that the stove in honor of her son in college will be removed. The parties settled the dispute out of court.

Yevgeny Belilovsky went to high school on September 11, 2001, he lost his mother

His mother, Elena Belilovskaya, worked on the 93rd floor of the North Tower. The former librarian who emigrated to the United States from Ukraine was recently promoted to assistant vice president at a Wall Street investment management firm.

That morning, teachers at the Eugene School in Mamaroneck, New York, interrupted classes to inform the students that something had happened in the Twin Towers. They weren't sure what it was. In the school gym, where Yevgeny's classmates gathered to get more information, the radio worked.

“I started to get really worried because I knew my mom worked pretty high,” he said.

It wasn't until he got to his grandparents' house after school that he learned that his mother had gone missing. In the days following the attacks, his family hoped that Elena would be found alive. As the days turned into weeks, their hopes faded.

Her body was found several months later. As was her work ID, faded and covered in scratches.

The identity card shows Elena's Americanized name, Helen. The security hologram superimposed on the ID is an illustration of the Twin Towers. Initially, the identity card was given to Eugene's father. His grandmother recently asked if she could keep it while she was alive.

Eugene (Eugene) received support from Tuesday's Children, a non-profit organization founded with the specific mission of helping children who lost their parents on 11/XNUMX. Over the years, Eugene worked with a mentor who helped him with career guidance.

Eugene now works as a mental health consultant. He is not sure that he would have chosen this profession if he had not experienced the loss of his mother.

"It's hard to say," he said, "but I think that situation contributed to it."