It was a phone call, given by a father to his son, all that is most futile. On March 22, 2016, at 7:58 a.m., Ed Pinczowski called, from his home in Lanaken, his son Alexander, who had left the house two hours earlier. Alexander was in Zaventem in line at the check-in counter for a Delta flight to New York. Ed wanted to know what to do with an invoice in Alexander’s name that he had just discovered.
The conversation was short. “At 07:58 and 25 seconds, his voice disappeared,” testified on Wednesday before the Assize Court which judges the attacks, Ed Pinczowski. “A few weeks later, I learned that it was the blast from the explosion. Communications were interrupted”. And to clarify that he did not hear the “boom which, according to science, follows the blast of an explosion”.
It was the first bomb that exploded in Zaventem on March 22, 2016. It cost the life of 29-year-old Alexander. Her 26-year-old sister Sascha was due to take the same flight. She was next to him. She also died in the attack.
Along with his wife, Marjan Pinczowski-Fasbender, Ed toured hospitals. “We had to wait until Friday March 25 to obtain the official communication that our two children had not survived”. explained, with dignity, Ed Pinczowski, seated at the witness table with his wife.
citizens of the world
With their children, born in Jerusalem for the eldest and in the Netherlands for the youngest, they were “citizens of the world”, deployed around the world, on the assignments of Ed, who was general manager of hotels for a large American chain. On March 22, Alexander was to join his wife in the United States. Sascha, who had studied there and wanted to settle there, intended to see his friends there once more.
In the summer of 2016, parents will be able to see images from surveillance cameras. “This is a proposition that many parents would not accept. We hoped to see their last moments, to know that they had died with a smile and to have proof that they had not realized anything”. explained Marjan Fasbender.
In the footage, they saw Alexander on the phone. “We saw the terrorist walking towards them: a young man who might have been a friend of theirs. Against all logic, I said to myself (thinking of the terrorist), ‘Turn to the other side’. My children were not so lucky. They were almost face to face with their killer who set off his bomb.”
The investigation showed that Alexander and Sascha were on the front line. “In their last moments, they did not know that they served as a shield for a family behind them. More than likely, they saved this family’s life. Knowing them, I’m sure it would have made them proud.” continued the mother.
The parents do not understand what might have motivated the terrorists. “Crimes of such magnitude, so meaningless, committed once morest strangers, imply a state of mind that I will never be able to understand.” summarizes Ed Pinczowski.
And, to emphasize that, given his Jewish origins, he was confronted in his youth with violence and discrimination. His parents are the only Holocaust survivors in their family,”so that I never knew my grandparents, my uncles, my aunts and my cousins. And today, because of this violence, I no longer have children”.
“We are no longer the parents of two fantastic children. We have to make an effort to get up in the morning and get on with our lives,” dit en echo Marjan Fassbender.
The mother does not understand the gesture of the terrorists either. “I pity them. Young men who had a miserable life have found nothing better than to blow up innocent people including children.” And to wonder:Did these brutal acts give you what you wanted? Did it make your family proud of you?”, she launched in front of the accused who, in their boxes, showed no emotion.
“Life in Hell”
Before expressing his anger: “If I might decide, the defendants would be sentenced to life in hell. I am not a vindictive person but, because of their actions, I have become a worse version of myself”.
This anger and this incomprehension are also shared by the parents of Bart Migom, who died at the age of 22 in Zaventem. “It is not for me to say who is guilty. But whatever responsibility everyone has, however small, is a crushing responsibility. I look calm. But inside, I seethe. Why did we do this, without any shame? In whose name? And of what? What is the meaning of this?”, he concluded his testimony.
