Grieving families, local and national dignitaries and first responders gathered in New York City on Wednesday to commemorate the 23rd anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States that killed nearly 3,000 people.

Both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump attended the annual memorial service, just hours after their heated presidential debate in Philadelphia on Tuesday night.

Joe Biden, the US President, accompanied Harris, his Vice President and now the Democratic presidential candidate, in the elections this November after Biden ended his re-election campaign in July following his own disastrous debate against Trump.

Biden and Harris marked the anniversary of the al-Qaeda attacks on the United States and planned visits to all three sites where the hijacked planes crashed in 2001: the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon near Washington DC and a field in Pennsylvania.

Trump attended the event in New York along with his Republican running mate, JD Vance. Trump and Harris shook hands with strained smiles before posing solemnly for the ceremony.

Although 9/11 commemorations are a serious and poignant event and are intentionally held in a bipartisan manner, tensions rise each election cycle, and on Wednesday many eyes were on Harris and Trump to see if and how they would interact.

On Tuesday evening, Harris deliberately left the stage before the debate began and extended her hand to Trump. She introduced herself, since they had never met in person, and forced Trump to shake her hand.

After the subsequent handshake at the memorial and a brief exchange between the two presidential candidates, Harris positioned himself to the right of Biden, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg between Biden and Trump, and Vance to the left of Trump.

Missing from this central group was incumbent New York Mayor Eric Adams, whose administration is under federal investigation.

Harris made the trip just hours after arriving in New York after most polls declared her the winner of the debate against the Republican presidential candidate in Philadelphia, just eight weeks before the November 5 presidential election.

No speeches by politicians were planned at the site of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, popularly known as Ground Zero, where relatives read out the names of the victims.

Biden and Harris then planned to fly to Shanksville, where the passengers of United Flight 93 overpowered the hijackers and crashed the plane in a field, preventing it from hitting another target. They then plan to return to the Washington area to visit the Pentagon memorial.

The attack killed nearly 3,000 people, including more than 2,750 in New York, 184 in the Pentagon and 40 in Shanksville. This figure does not include the 13 terrorist hijackers who also died.

“We can only imagine the depth of suffering and pain that the families and survivors of 9/11 have felt every day for the past 23 years, and we will always remember and honor those who were taken from us far too soon,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters aboard Air Force One on Tuesday evening.

“We will continue to do everything in our power to ensure that such an attack never happens again,” she said.

Biden issued a proclamation commemorating those who lost their lives in the attacks and the hundreds of thousands of Americans who volunteered for military service afterward.

“We owe these patriots of the 9/11 generation a debt of gratitude that we can never fully repay,” Biden said, referring to operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and other war zones, as well as the capture and killing of the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden, and his deputy.

On Tuesday, U.S. Congressional leaders posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to 13 of the soldiers killed in the August 26, 2021 suicide attack on Kabul airport during the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Political tensions were high in New York, even though the event was officially a non-partisan memorial service.

“You’re surrounded by people who are grieving, proud, sad – who know what this day is about and what these loved ones meant to you. It’s not political,” said Melissa Tarasiewicz, who lost her father, New York City firefighter Allan Tarasiewicz.

Increasingly, in New York, the obituaries and names of the victims of the attacks themselves are coming from children and young adults who were born after a parent, grandparent, aunt or uncle was killed in the attacks.

“Even though I never met you, it feels like I’ve known you forever,” Annabella Sanchez said last year of her grandfather Edward Joseph Papa. “We will always remember you and honor you, every day. We love you, Grandpa Eddie.”

One increasingly hears a poignant phrase from people who have lost loved ones: “I never met you.”

It is the sound of generational change. Some names are read out by children or young adults who were born after the strikes. At last year’s commemoration, 28 such young people were among more than 140 readers. Young people were also expected at this year’s ceremony on Wednesday.

Some are the children of victims whose partners were pregnant. Many of the young readers are nieces, nephews or grandchildren of the victims. They have inherited stories, photographs and a sense of solemn responsibility.

Belonging to a “9/11 family” endures across generations, and the memory and understanding of the September 11 attacks will one day be left to a world that has no firsthand memory of them.

“It’s like passing the torch,” said 13-year-old Allan Aldycki, who read the names of his grandfather, Allan Tarasiewicz, and several others.

Reuters and Associated Press contributed reporting