REMEMBERING THE SERBIAN VICTIMS OF SEPTEMBER 11: Vladimir and Bojan vanished in the smoke and flames of the Twin Towers!

As America pays tribute to the innocent victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, Serbs around the world respectfully remember Vladimir Tomašević and Bojan Kostić, two young men from Belgrade who were killed that day in the attack on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan.

Bojan Kostić was on the 104th floor in the offices of brokerage firm “Cantor Fitzgerald” when the hijacked plane made its first impact on the World Trade Center. One minute after the devastating explosion, he called his Swedish fiancée Suzan and left her a message on her answering machine: “The plane hit the building, we will try to evacuate.” His body was never found, and Bojan Kostić, along with thousands of others missing in the rubble of the World Trade Center, was declared dead.

Bojan Kostić was born in 1968 in Belgrade, where he attended elementary school and high school. As one of the highly talented young players in Partizan’s basketball school, he received a scholarship to the University of Iowa. He played basketball and studied there, but after suffering a serious injury, he was forced to end his sports career.

Vladimir Tomašević, who lived in Canada with his wife Tanja, arrived in New York on that fateful September 11, 2001, to attend an information technology seminar. At the time of the Al-Qaeda terrorist attack, he was in the premises known as “Windows on the World,” on the top floor of one of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.

Vladimir Tomašević was born on January 25, 1965, in Kosovo and Metohija. At an early age, as a four-year-old boy, he moved to Belgrade with his parents and younger sister Jelena, where he graduated from the School of Electrical Engineering.

In Canada, he worked on software development. He quickly advanced in his career and was appointed vice president of the company “Optus Business Solutions.” One year after the terrorist attack, while publishing biographies of the victims, The New York Times wrote about Vladimir Tomašević on June 16, 2002, that he was a man who “always knew how to give compliments to others.” He lived with his wife Tanja in Toronto and enjoyed playing tennis and golf.

Believing that it would not be possible to find the remains of all the victims, New York City authorities, following the terrorist attack, offered the victims’ families urns containing ashes from the ruins of the destroyed Twin Towers. Vladimir Tomašević’s parents accepted the offer and placed the urn that arrived from America at Topčider Cemetery in Belgrade, and later additional body parts were recovered. Vladimir’s remains were buried on September 11, 2008, in Belgrade.