It was a Tuesday. Everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing when the planes hit the Twin Towers. At that moment, Sophie Raubiet, a native Paimpolaise, was having breakfast with her companion in their apartment on the 45th floor of a Manhattan building, two blocks from the World Trade Center: “I was at the window, I saw the first plane arrive from the north, says the Breton, now 54 years old. He was flying very low, I thought he had a technical problem and that he could not gain altitude. He passed just above us with a deafening uproar. And we heard a loud noise, as if a bomb was exploding. The earth shook. Twenty minutes later, when the second plane hit the other tower, in three seconds, we knew it wasn’t an accident ”.
We didn’t go back to the apartment for at least a month.
The couple then rush into the street. Sophie Raubiet jumps on the last subway still in circulation to reach her office in northern Manhattan. His companion spins off to pick up his son from school in the Brooklyn neighborhood. They will ultimately spend four days at a distance from each other. “We didn’t go back to the apartment for at least a month,” recalls Sophie Raubiet. It was very complicated to manage the rest, but we were alive, we were out of the story. “
Born in Paimpol, to a Breton mother and a Norman father, Sophie Raubiet has been living in the United States since 1994. Very involved in the life of the community, she is a member of the board of directors of the Bretons of New York. She now works at Bernardaud, a luxury porcelain store, located at 499 Park Avenue. This building also houses the investor company Cantor Fitzgerald, whose offices occupied five floors, at the top of one of the towers of the World Trade Center. The company lost 658 employees in the terrorist attacks. It is the company that has paid the heaviest price to date. “Every year, they bring in celebrities like Bill Clinton or great basketball or American football players to sign autographs and take selfies with the families of the victims,” testifies the Frenchwoman.
Endless war
Twenty years after these attacks which claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 people, including 800 firefighters, the memory remains intact in the memory of those who experienced them. But young people discover it in their history books: “For them, it’s not really a subject. Since then, there has been the 2008 crisis and recession and the covid-19 pandemic, disasters that New York has experienced and survived. What surprises me is that we repeat over and over again “we will never forget”, whereas we quickly turned the page, we moved on to something else . Of course, those who have lost a loved one will remember it and relive this moment very strongly ”.
It will truly be a day in memory of the victims of the attacks. Americans talk little about politics anyway.
This anniversary coincides, this year, with the total withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan, since August 31, after twenty years of an endless war that has turned into a fiasco for the presidents who have succeeded in the White House. . Hundreds of billions of dollars have been wasted in this Afghan quagmire that some compare to Vietnam. But this Saturday, we will carefully avoid evoking the controversy, assures Sophie Raubiet: “It will really be a day in memory of the victims of the attacks. Americans talk little about politics anyway. In the United States, for example, there was no demonstration like in France against the anti-covid vaccine or the health pass. There is no strike here. Education is much less efficient than in Europe. In my opinion, it is wanted so that we can control what people think ”.
Contact
Write to him: [email protected]
–
