Family members of September 11, 2001, victims vowed yesterday to stage daily protests near ground zero until officials scrap plans for an International Freedom Center at the site.

Organizers of the center have said their plans call for exhibits on the Holocaust, the civil-rights movement, and the Soviet gulags, as part of an effort to construct a “universal narrative of hope.” Family members express concern, however, that the center’s wide-ranging displays will divert attention from the victims who died in the attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center.

“We have enough memorials for the Indians and for the Holocaust,” a retiree from Pine Knoll Shores, N.C., Christine Serafin, said. Her 36-year-old son, Robert Evans, a firefighter, died at ground zero.

“If you want to talk about lynching, go to Alabama,” Ms. Serafin’s daughter, Jeanne Evans, 41, of Franklin Square, N.Y., said.

A member of the executive board of the Coalition of 9/11 Families, Patricia Reilly of Staten Island, said the daily protests represent a new front in the battle by victims’ relatives to block the International Freedom Center. Ms. Reilly, who lost her sister, Lorraine Lee, 37, an insurance broker from Chelsea, in the attacks, said victims’ family members would crisscross the nation in the next few months, visiting 9/11 memorials in other states to drum up opposition to the freedom center. She said their first stop would be Anthony, Kan., a city of 2,440 people located 56 miles southwest of Wichita.

“We’re going over the heads of politicians, and we’re taking our message directly to the American people,” Ms. Reilly said.

The family members are gathering signatures for a petition, addressed to Governor Pataki, Mayor Bloomberg, and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, that calls for a memorial that will “stand as a solemn remembrance of those who died … and not as a journey of history’s ‘failures’ or as a debate about domestic and foreign policy.”

According to the petition, the International Freedom Center “honors no one by making excuses for the perpetrators of this heinous crime.”

Nevertheless, the chairman of the freedom center, Thomas Bernstein, said through a spokesman yesterday: “Rest assured that the IFC will never host ‘debate’ about the ‘reasons’ for the murder of nearly 3,000 people at the World Trade Center, nor, more broadly, will it be used as a forum for denigrating the country we love.”

The freedom center will not be the only tenant at the cultural center planned for ground zero: It will share space inside a museum complex with the Drawing Center, an institution currently based in SoHo that has featured works by artists ranging from Michelangelo to Louise Bourgeois. According to a spokeswoman for the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, Joanna Rose, initial plans called for the cultural center to have a maximum capacity of 250,000 square feet, “but we’re in the process of scaling that down.” She said Mr. Pataki asked the corporation in May to reduce the size of the cultural center and to move it farther away from the planned north tower reflecting pool.

The site will include a 100,000-square-foot Memorial Center devoted to the memory of September 11, 2001, victims and to the six people who died in the first World Trade Center attack, in February 1993, according to Ms. Rose. The LMDC has also said a private room at the bedrock level will be reserved as a place for victims’ relatives.

“We’re very sensitive to the concerns of family members,” Ms. Rose said, adding that the memorial to the September 11, 2001, dead “has always been at the center of our efforts.”

At a press conference in the Bronx yesterday, Mr. Bloomberg said that the city will seek to strike an “appropriate balance” between efforts to memorialize the September 11, 2001, victims and the need to house commercial, educational, recreational, and residential facilities at the site.

“We cannot not build,” the mayor said.

While at yesterday’s protest the two dozen or so family members of victims mostly channeled their anger toward the freedom center, some relatives also blasted the development corporation’s plan to provide space for the Tribeca Film Festival at the site of ground zero.

A Staten Island woman, Peggy Mc-Grane, clutched a photo of her sister, Molly Herencia, who had worked as an insurance broker at Aon Corporation on the 93rd floor of the south tower.

“That’s her burial ground,” Ms. Mc-Grane said. “And people are going to go to the movies there?”

While Ms. McGrane said her sister’s body was never identified in the World Trade Center debris, just steps away, a 59-year-old woman from Ramsey, N.J., Nassima Wachtler, said that she had received the remains of her late son Gregory, a 25-year-old researcher at Fred Alger Management on the 93rd floor of the north tower, in three installments.

While Ms. Wachtler, a French-language interpreter, prepares for her son’s third burial next month, she expresses worry about the way foreign tourists will react to the freedom center.

“I’m embarrassed,” she said. “The world is going to be laughing at us.”

A social worker from Bathgate, Scotland, who signed the petition yesterday, Theresa Cassidy, 44, said she was stunned that officials would even consider erecting a museum at ground zero.

“With the size of the United States, there must be somewhere else to put this,” she said. Her 19-year-old daughter, Arlene, a drama student in Glasgow, added: “If this were to happen in London, there would be an outcry.”

The family members joined an ordained Baptist minister, the Reverend William Minson, in a prayer for the victims of Thursday morning’s London bombings. Rev. Minson said he has conducted a prayer service for September 11, 2001, victims’ grieving relatives – as well as for armed service members and first-responders – every day at noon since September 15, 2001.

“We’ve had no terror attacks since then, so I’m encouraged to keep on praying,” Rev. Minson said.

Other than Rev. Minson’s prayer service, which drew a large crowd of tourists, yesterday’s petition drive was mostly a quiet affair, with victims’ family members collecting about 200 signatures before running out of paper.

Nearby, a Fairlawn, N.J., flutist, Philip Belgasso, who said that he has come to the site every day since September 2001, repeatedly played the tune of “Amazing Grace.” Some petition signers, including a woman from Kirkwood, Mo., Sharon Seabough, 43, fought back tears as they listened to victims’ family members tell their stories.

“Personally, I’m moved by the depth and breadth of what these people have been through,” Ms. Seabough, a project manager at a marketing firm, said. “I want them to have whatever they need.”