Sept. 11th Memorial Plaques And Walls Not Just In The United States

There have been a plethora of different bronze plaques, memorial walls, and statues of remembrance created across the United Sates following the tragic events of September 11th, 2001. Perhaps most notable is the Flight 93 National Memorial, which is currently underway and is scheduled to be dedicated on the tenth anniversary of the attacks, on September 11th, 2011. There are currently a plethora of temporary memorial plaques and symbols in the location of the crash in Stonycreek Township, Pennsylvannia, and these are truly just a small handful in comparison to the thousands of memorial plaques, walls, and tributes across the nation.

But it was in Jerusalem, Israel, that the first ever memorial plaques with names honoring those who perished on September 11th, 2001 was created. Unveiled during the summer of 2009, the memorial is a 3-foot high bronze sculpture that depicts a waving American flag transforming into a flame. A cast bronze plaques resting beside it will feature the names of all 2,974 individuals killed during the events of September 11th.

The memorial is located in Jerusalem’s Arazim Valley in the Ramot neighborhood and rests on a gray granite base. The significance of the base cannot be undervalued: it is made of materials from the original Twin Towers, donated to the Israeli government by the New York municipality. The memorial plaques and statue costs over two million American dollars, most of which was donated by American and Israeli philanthropists. The site was built and will be maintained by the Jewish National Fund.

“It’ll be a plaza that can hold up to 300 people, a place that prime ministers and ambassadors who come into the city will have to stop for to lay a wreath and say a prayer,” said Jewish National Fund Russell Robinson a few days before the statue and memorial plaques were revealed. “The whole monument really tells the story of 9/11. The plaza itself doesn’t quite look like a pentagon, but the idea of the base of it is the Pentagon. It’s a little bit indented into the earth, to depict the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. And it has the sculpture in the middle that depicts an American flag in flames, which [represents] the Twin Towers.”

The 30-foot bronze sculpture is surrounding by “the 9/11 Living Memorial Plaza, which was donated by the Bronka Stavsky Rabin Weintraub Trust. It was unveiled on November 12th, 2009, and had been planned since 2002, according to Robinson.

“There was a group of people who wanted to do something,” Robinson said. “To reach out and to show the values of American and Israelis share, and that Israel shares with all victims of terror.”