"
The attack was going to make me live every minute as if it were the last line
."
The reading of an excerpt from the
Lambeau
by Philippe Lançon, journalist who survived the
Charlie Hebdo
attacks
, resonated with particular force during the ceremony commemorating the victims of terrorism, Thursday, March 11 at the Invalides.
Pandemic and meditation oblige, it is in a small committee that Emmanuel Macron greeted the memory of the victims, in the presence of a handful of political leaders, including the former heads of state, François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy.
Also present was one of the victims of Mohammed Merah, a Franco-Algerian terrorist who had murdered seven people, including three children, in Toulouse and Montauban in 2012.
Read also: After the shock of the attacks, the unfailing commitment of associations
This is the second National Day dedicated to victims of attacks, obtained by victims' associations, and commemorated throughout Europe.
At Invalides, a symbolic place where most of the survivors of the attacks are taken care of, the Head of State presided over a sober ceremony, without speech.
A simple spray was laid and a time of meditation observed, before reading an extract from Philippe Lançon's story by Chloé Bertolus, head of the maxillofacial surgery department at the Pitié Salpêtrière hospital, who had operated on the jaw of a journalist seriously injured in 2013.
A museum of terrorism
After this short ceremony, the president must go to the printing office of Michel Catalano, the entrepreneur from Dammartin-en-Goële taken hostage on January 9, 2015 by the Kouachi brothers, during their run after the
Charlie Hebdo
attack.
.
“
These days are also an opportunity to recall all the measures we are putting in place in the fight against terrorism.
It is something that we owe to the victims,
”declared the Élysée.
Read also: The Terrorism Memorial Museum takes shape
The commemoration of the victims of the attacks holds an important place in the five-year term of Emmanuel Macron.
In 2018, the president announced the creation of a memorial museum of terrorism, planned for 2027 in Paris, and whose development was entrusted to the historian Henry Rousso, research director at the CNRS.
One way to support the relatives of the victims and the survivors, while Islamist terrorism has killed 263 people since 2012 in France.