Westward. Encounters with Swiss American Women
For Rosa, the New York marathon is the high point of the year in her police work. “I am usually stationed in one of the Red Cross tents where the runners come down from the bridge on 59th Street. I also help as translator for Europeans who are having cramps, blisters on their feet or urgently need an aspirin or some words that will encourage them to persevere to the end.”
A day she’ll never forget is September 11, 2001. “Shortly after 9 a.m.. friends from Switzerland called to see if I was still alive. I had no idea what had happened! The shock came a few seconds later when I turned on the TV. A while later a colleague urged me not to go to our police station; he wanted to make sure that I would not be sent to Ground Zero. To be honest, I was grateful to him. A Swiss woman I knew perished in the tower. The mood in New York was similar to that when President Kennedy was assassinated, horrible.” Rosa’s voice is very low. “The stench of burned plastic and burned corpses and yellow dust lay over the entire city for weeks. For ten days I was on almost uninterrupted duty. Fortunately it was in my district and not in downtown Manhattan. We had to block the street where the Fire House, the Police Precinct, and a Jewish synagogue are located. The people were all on the streets – shocked, traumatized, they wanted to talk. I had to help protect the roadblocks, to calm people, often simply listen to them, to be there for them. I barely had time to go home and get some sleep. We all shared a common destiny; New York has changed since then. The thought that something similar could suddenly happen again is always present in the back of my mind, and will probably never go away. Airplanes or helicopters over the city cause my heart to beat faster every time. 9/11 has changed the life of all of us. But New Yorkers always know how to adapt and how to find the positive in life. I fit in here very well.”