Paris
Grégory Reibenberg is the owner of the restaurant La Belle Equipe, one of the targets of the November 2015 attacks. 19 people were killed there, including Djamila Houd, his ex-wife and the mother of his daughter. He turned to writing as a form of therapy and published a book the following year, in which he describes how he processed his trauma.
5 years after the terror attacks, what’s your state of mind today?
We’re going through a lousy time in every way. We all long to get through this COVID pandemic and finally start to live again without having to think about unpleasant stuff. The last thing anyone who’s been through the things I’ve personally experienced needs is a guy like me. I’ll listen to him, I’ll say, “Well done, my friend!” and then turn off. I don’t know how we should all react, but I think people must get a bit sick of all that.
My state of mind is the same as yours: “The others weren’t there”… It affects everyone. It’s a permanent ongoing thing. There’s no end date. Personally, I’m still living in my village in the 11th district. It’s a date on which if I can get to Paris, that’s great, but I’ve never really done so. In all cases, I avoid being in the street because if my eyes meet someone else’s, even in a friendly way, it seems like it was yesterday again. Because for all these people, once a year, it’s yesterday. I speak for myself but I know it’s something you’ll encounter with everyone concerned. There’s just no end date, no sense of time. I live with it just as the other survivors do. They’re part of my survivor family.
How do you manage during the commemorations?
It’s so personal, I can’t really talk about it.
What I do know is that this is my own personal trauma but it doesn’t belong to me. What happened is a collective trauma, and if it happened somewhere else, I’ve no sense of guilt. But it happened in my place. Before reopening my restaurant, I wrote to all the victims, to their families and to everyone whose contact details I had. Unfortunately, I knew many of them.
It was a standard letter explaining to them what I’d done inside. In terms of commemoration, inside the Belle Équipe, there are two large two-metre-by-three-metre painted glass features with poppies. In the poppy veins, there are the 20 first names of the victims interlaced with one another. But it’s discreet, it’s not a plaque. It’s my way of doing things, with the destruction of everything and its reconstruction in a different manner, to ensure that this remains a worthy and dignified place.
What’s the point of joint commemorations? I don’t know. I know that it’s useful to help us remember everyone so it has value in that respect. Over and above this, if it helps bring us together and remember what we’re commemorating because people are dying for our values…because that’s what we need to get across. That’s what I’m particularly attached to because it’s simply so true. And I can tell you that that’s what they were targeting with La Belle Équipe, and they couldn’t have done better because if you cross the street and read the commemorative plaque with all of the last names and first names, you’ll see that they reached the very essence of France. There’s every first name under the sun, from all kinds of different origins. Here, they have hit what we are, namely a country in which we can all live together with different life stories and different religions, because our lives can be multiple and varied with our diverse origins and cultural histories. France makes this possible and our society allows us to have a private and spiritual sphere and for everyone to co-exist instead of being separated from one another.
Why is it so important for you to continue living as normally as possible and to keep moving forward?
It’s all linked to what we are in life deep down, and unfortunately, those things only emerge when you’re faced with experiences like these or others. As a child, I always asked the question: during the Second World War would I have been part of the 10% who were traitors, the 10% who were resistance fighters or the 80% who were sheep? I think I know the answer to that question without actively seeking to do so. Life’s events have made it so. And afterwards, it didn’t take me long to decide what the future of my establishment would be. In less than 48 hours, I was back running the Belle Équipe and it was all clear to me. Sunday morning, my decision was taken. I already knew where I would be today. In any case, in relation to my establishment and in relation to these events, I haven’t changed.
Ultimately, I think it’s a state of mind. There are so many people that live through horrible life events every day. Whether it’s the Sri Lankan man who lost his whole family in the tsunami or the tragedy which affected me. When you have a little girl, when you’re alone and you’re a survivor… You didn’t choose to be a survivor. I had two couples who never came back with children and when you come back, you don’t ask the question.
In an interview, you once said, “I wanted somewhere to commemorate the events but more importantly one which celebrates life.”
As a citizen, you have a duty to rebuild, to create something beautiful. It just couldn’t be any other way. But it’s also to give them a huge V-sign, to say, “Screw you, our values are stronger and we’ll never give in, even if you shoot at us, if you kill our wives and our children. We won’t turn our backs on what we are. Our values are better, and they’re worth taking the risk for and assuming all the consequences.” It’s also a way of saying “no!”. We not going to give them this pleasure. When a town’s bombed, you either rebuild it or abandon it, and human nature doesn’t lend itself to abandonment. I’ll destroy everything and start again, and it’ll always be somewhere full of life. This is the best tribute I can leave for those who are no longer with us.
How do you feel about the way the media have covered the terror attacks collectively?
When I went on TV in a major TV programme, I couldn’t help but see myself in the role as a little soldier of the republic. I wanted to appear smiling just three, four or five days after the events, as this was my way of showing the world and those who did this that you can shoot at us, you can hurt us and you can leave us with scars, but we’ll always get up again. We won’t give them the pleasure of showing them broken people on TV. That would be too much. Our collective national reactions to all that are already ridiculous, which shocks me. The tear-jerking speeches. Those who did this are loving every minute of seeing us like this; it’s a real joy for them and you’ll just encourage them to do it again. When it happens again, do we really need to show their names and faces? We know that this could be used elsewhere in the world to create martyrs, that they love this. Do we really need to do that? These people, these individuals, should be seen as nothings. They intrinsically possess no importance whatsoever and deserve to be forgotten. In any case, we should not remember their name or their face.
I’m just shocked with what I sometimes hear in the TV studios. This is a very personal thing. This is a victim talking. They talk about the events at the Bataclan when talking about 13 November. It’s like me and my 20 victims don’t even exist. Why is everything reduced in this way? Because our ‘barometer’ of the events is the concert venue and that’s where we find the most deaths and the most terror. So in terms of emotional scores, the Bataclan is off the scale, although 20 people died in my establishment
Our attitude when there’s a terror attack, our collective emotional reaction, is unforgivable. The people who organise these attacks are not idiots. They were well planned in advance. The preparations have been underway for more than 20 years. It’s all woven together like a spider’s web. And today, they’re reaping the fruits of their work. And for our part, we don’t really learn.
In your view, how much importance should be attached to the commemorations? At some stage, should we just be moving on?
It’s part of being human… We get used to everything. Afterwards, is the problem not a case of getting used to it, but of reacting to it? And collectively, can we understand? Can we really move beyond emotion and reaction?
Are we able to all collectively understand what exactly are our values, those that are being attacked? And that fear will not help us avoid the danger. It’s important to teach young people that the republic is a wonderful thing and didn’t come about by accident, that it’s not a gift. If we fail to teach kids this lesson, and children of the republic then go on to do this, there’s a real collective problem.
If our reactions are limited to simply crying on anniversary dates and wanting to end it all when it comes around, we’ll never move forward. When 3 million people are outside on 11 January, that means something. You know, it’s easy to talk about the terror attacks of 11 January because I was outside of them. On 30 November, I was right in the middle of it; Charlie was like a knife to my heart, my soul and to who I am. I’ve never been a reader of Charlie but people committing murder because where they come from, you don’t disrespect a picture of the prophet… I don’t particularly like the cartoons but that’s not the message. The message is that this can exist and that nothing is blasphemous. What has been attacked is our very identity.
I want people this country, whatever their religion, to accept this particular characteristic of France, one which has taken 1200 years to instil, with wars against the clergy. That doesn’t mean that I like the cartoons, and I absolutely don’t. But God is not a taboo subject. Otherwise, this implies that this is the law and nothing else. They didn’t teach me that at schools inspired by the enlightenment and the republic.
I respect everyone, but I can’t accept that someone won’t accept us for our differences and our unique characteristics. We’re now reaping what has been sown by these people for the last 20 years, which we have tolerated for many reasons, some good, some bad. Now, we need to do something and we must remember that it’s not fear or hatred that will take us forward, it’s reclaiming our values.
A year after the terror attacks you published a book. How did this project come about?
One thing I discovered with these events is writing. I wrote immediately, as a reflex, to record some of these things in writing. Without even noticing it, it became a comforter. In fact, there was a period between 23 November and 22 December when I wrote every day. This was my oxygen. I wrote around 20 pages and I reopened La Belle Equipe. I’m very proud of myself. It went on to become a book. But since then, I’ve derived pleasure from writing and it definitely does me good. The book was warmly received and I was very happy to see all the messages, telling me that my book was a hymn to life. Life is there, contained within. And to receive this sort of feedback from people is amazing. I could not have hoped for more.
What are you hoping for by sharing your account?
If I listen to myself, I want to portray a real little Republican European citizen, certain and proud of his values. The scars don’t stop you smiling and moving forward in life. And show that when you’re fired up like that, you can rebuild something stronger and if you can manage that, it’s precisely because our lives are built on meaningful values. It’s all become so normal to us that we tend to forget this.
And unfortunately, there are those people who go on to remind us that we have such good fortune, that we have this privilege and that we need to fight in every sense of the word. Today, we need a cultural war, which is terrible, because there are people dying, killing themselves and killing others while believing they’re doing good. They don’t have a brain cell between them as we know. I’m not joking here… You won’t find one great intellectual among them, but there are people who really believe they’re doing the right thing although this is written nowhere.
Religion is only a pretext, but from the early origins of humanity, religion has been a pretext used by some people to kill or to serve their ends. There’s nothing new there.
So yes, I want to show my face as a soldier of the republic among the millions of others. It’s an ocean comprised of thousands of droplets, and I want to be a droplet in this living ocean, which represents our way of life with its shortcomings and qualities.
Berlin
Martin Germer has been the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church’s pastor since 2005. The church,Berlin’s landmark, was the site of the attack. In the weeks following the attack, he took over the “public pastoral care” and bridged the gap between the local population and the authorities.
How should we think of the role of a priest in such a situation?
My job in these early days was, in large part, to be a point of contact for the media from the church‘s point of view. The main thing I did was public spiritual welfare. Not the kind of highly individual spiritual welfare in one-on-one conversations with the people, but instead conveyed it through interviews in order to help process the shock.
Pretty early on at the start, I wrote to the editor-in-chief of the ZDF (Second German Television), „Do you have to show the picture of the perpetrator every time there‘s a report that mentions the attack or the events of that day?“ But that‘s how many people got the impression that oh, the attacker is more important than the victims, because the pictures of the victims weren‘t shown for a very long time in Germany.
I am very grateful to the German press for respecting all of that. Even after names became public and pictures could have been made available, they were not shown. For their own protection or on their own wishes, the victims did not appear.
When I spoke with journalists, they told me that I had absolutely played a helpful role for the general public in my position as pastor of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church.
Would you say that in this case the church took on the role of politics (meaning the support of the victims)?
We had no contact with the victims. That was all part of a police policy. In the beginning, the communication on the part of the state was very unfortunate. Relatives only learned days later that the person they were worried about had died, even though it had long been obvious.
The police made a cognitive error in the beginning.
It simply showed that our country was not structured to handle events like this. By now there are other plans for it not to happen again, but that‘s how it happened initially.
We as a church in Breitscheidplatz said weeks later that we wanted to send a signal to those affected. We received a list from the senate administration with nationalities and how many people there were. That‘s all we got.
We even had our letter translated into multiple languages. We wrote letters without names and sealed them. Then, in the senate, they were put in a larger envelope and addressed. The names could not be provided to us for data protection reasons. That is why we weren‘t able to get in touch with the family members directly.
Breitscheidplatz and its Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church was for many at first a place of terror. It would have been very different, in their eyes, coming to that place in particular. That is how I understood it in retrospect. We had great contact with some of the family members later on.
What worked really well on the first night was the deployment of rescue forces as well as the emergency spiritual aid. In Germany, there is a type of emergency spiritual aid, a structure maintained by the state, which liaises with pastoral workers in similar catastrophes, or when there is a particularly bad accident, who are sent as individuals. The fire department and the medics don‘t know how to handle it, they aren‘t trained in that, and this emergency spiritual aid is trained many times over by pastors because we simply have the appropriate background.
The emergency spiritual aid workers were there within fifteen minutes. I was told that the message then went to the hospitals that there were also many wounded there. There were already strong reactions, and there were the rescue workers who helped retrieve the bodies even though nobody was sure at the time that there weren‘t more explosives.
You always have to expect that the attackers are smarter or even more evil, and then maybe even add another level; but the people on the scene that day didn‘t let that stop them. They did what had to be done. What I kept saying in interviews, on the topic of the state‘s failure, was this: „Yes, it‘s terrible, it should not have happened in this way, but it did happen. Still, please just look at what has been achieved, and don‘t slam what they‘re doing.“
Then, in the months afterwards, it was my job to speak up for the authorities a little bit and also act as a mediator and provide bits of information in the background. Journalists are always a bit on edge, and the reports always have to be dramatic. It doesn‘t help in this situation. „It‘s complicated“ makes for a poor headline.
We wanted to be there for the people from the city and the country in their shock. It‘s only an estimate, but in those first four weeks, roughly 10,000 people entered their names in our condolence lists, and those were very touching situations, always very personal entries. That sort of worked in and of itself in this medium. We didn‘t need to intervene very much at all.
Around the church there were 15 different places that formed where people laid flowers, where children left small stuffed animals, everything that happens in places like that, hand-drawn signs, pictures, and even though there were a few things there which were polarizing, the vast majority was people taking part, often just this message: „We will not allow such an attack to change our attitude. In our support for a good and peaceful coexistence, you cannot take that away from us. Quite the contrary.“ We were able to make room for that.
There are theories that it was no accident that this attack on Breitscheidplatz was perpetrated in the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church so that this very symbolic structure would also be hit, and that the Christmas market was seen from the Muslim point of view as something specifically Christian, something specifically German. If that was the intent, they ultimately chose the wrong place because I can think of no stronger place than the Memorial Church, this symbol of peace, of the memory of violence and destruction, of peace and of racial enmity, to say: „You and your attack can do nothing against this. It is stronger than you.“ That was the feeling
then too.
Was there a consensus about the way that people would remember the terror attack?
The memorial was there relatively quickly. The decision from the state that there should be something like that, and that it should be there for the first anniversary, is an ambitious schedule for such processes. Usually, there are many parties involved, the drafts are discussed, and then it starts all over. Fortunately, everything went very smoothly: I made a suggestion pretty early on for the wording that should be on this memorial. I was very intent that the word „Islamist“ didn‘t appear, because many people confuse Islamist and Islamic.
It was very nice to hear that it was widely supported by decision-makers and that nobody questioned it. At the time, there were individuals who publicly criticized it, but it was widely accepted and that is how a very general wording came to be, which really focuses on remembering the 12 people who lost their lives. The place was inaugurated after one year.
It actually made possible the very idea behind it: That people are remembered: you can leave a candle, a flower, or you can just as easily walk on by. I myself pass the place often enough, and sometimes, I stop and see someone standing right there who is clearly still moved. When we have guests who contribute to the service with us, I regularly find that they also want to hark back because for them, it‘s part of the place.
In many ways, this contribution helps keep alive the memory of the victims of the attack. And at the same time, there are the words „for a peaceful coexistence of all people“. You could say „That‘s trite,“ but if you read it closely, it means for all people to live together peacefully, even those with whom you have little in common, or who you maybe even think are problematic and to live together in peace in spite of all that. If you dig into it, the sentence is very meaningful, and I think it is appropriate in such a place.
We are currently preparing for the fourth anniversary. We actually had the idea for it to get smaller every year, so that people don‘t have to relive it forever. It‘s the same with individual grief: You experience a great loss, and first the whole world stands still and you don‘t know how to continue, but then you gradually get on with your life. We remembered on the first anniversary; we also remembered on the second anniversary, but it moves into the background a bit, and that is also necessary because the wounds don‘t need to be re-opened again and again.But so far, it is especially the relatives who find it important to continue holding the event, and that it happens with some fanfare, with official involvement from the state and with a common symbol.
We‘ll see what happens next year, on the fifth anniversary. On the decades and half decades there‘s a different event. For this year, there‘s also of course the question of what to do about the coronavirus restrictions. The Christmas market will probably happen. Of course, it‘s important to the people in the Christmas market. They‘re of a split mind: On the one hand, they were personally affected and still are, literally. They were on the scene before anybody else was there, and after the fact, they had to process the shock. On the other hand, they were affected by it economically and ever since then it‘s just a fact that their Christmas market is the one connected with the attack. It‘s not exactly good for business. For the sellers, it‘s „Can‘t we put it behind us?“. If the society wishes it so, then naturally it will happen. We cooperate well with all those involved, with the authorities, the sellers, and other actors.
You strongly advocate Christian-Muslim dialogue. How did that start?
In January, I got a call from the vice chairman of a Berlin mosque congregation. They wanted to organize an interfaith prayer of peace at Breitscheidplatz very soon and bring together representatives of various religious communities to one collective act with a „prayer for peace“.
I first did some research because I didn‘t know the congregation. I had had no real experiences with Christian-Muslim dialogue. Then, I found out that they are a very involved mosque congregation in terms of their openness toward the society at large, but they are also controversial because they had been accused of having ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. I did more research and found that the accusations were specious, as whoever travels in the Muslim community naturally has contact with other Muslims, who then have contact with somebody who in turn was involved with the Muslim Brotherhood. You could probably establish such a chain for me, if you wanted, and then you‘d find out that I‘d had contact to someone unpleasant. In a certain sense, you can‘t escape that.
Then, we decided in agreement with the bishop that it must be borne together and that we would put our trust in a wonderful event. One of the highlights from that was that Sunnis and Shiites turned up together, and if you consider the state of the Islamic world, you know that that in itself is a huge win.
This event was strongly attacked in certain circles due to these accusations. That made me want to advocate specifically for this Neukölln meeting place, the Dar-Salam Mosque, in various places and in various ways, and say good things about them. I said they were doing good work and if you wanted to criticize them, then you should talk to them about it instead of writing about them. And with some journalists, that made a difference.
I want to clarify how that developed. I was invited to conferences and suddenly I was „the expert on Islamist terrorism“; I was asked to report on my experiences. I moved in circles of younger Muslims who live in Germany and are second- or third-generation, who are socialized as Germans but who are Muslims at the same time and have a family background; they must place themselves somewhere in this zone of tension and say, „We want to be Muslims, we want to be Muslims in Europe, but of course we also have to uphold our traditions.“
I got into debates of that nature, and my involvement started being shared en masse on social media by young Muslims. They acted as liaisons. There‘s this evangelical priest who is a priest at the most famous church in Germany and who also clearly has a certain meaning, and he‘s speaking up for us.
That made quite an impression. It wasn‘t something I would have planned, but that was the effect; it cost me a lot of time in the past few years because I had to get situated, I had to have interviews, and I went to conferences. But I had the feeling that I could contribute something good to society. That is an indirect effect of the attack, but it is an effect that is definitely positive for the relationship between Christians and Muslims in our society.
What similarities/differences do you see to the other terror attacks perpetrated elsewhere in Europe? In your opinion, should there be collective commemorative events, for example, on the European day for the victims of terrorism?
Firstly, in terms of the type of attack, naturally, Nice, Barcelona, Stockholm and Berlin are all attacks where the tools of murder were all very easy to come by, while other attacks were perpetrated with weapons. That‘s the difference. The intention is similar, though. Charlie Hebdo was of course directed specifically at the newspaper and the editors, while here it was more general, the population. Those are the similarities and differences (and still are, both for France and Germany) such that you always have to expect something different to happen.
In Germany, I would say we don‘t just have the Islamist terror threat but also far more radical right-wing perpetrators if you look at the total number of victims.
We have to consider them as well at all times. Collective commemorative events, I wouldn‘t go in that direction at first. I believe that every place has its own memory. To bundle them all together would be, as I feel it, to go in the wrong direction. That would basically mean „We‘re now threatened collectively“, which tends to lead to mechanisms of division, which, in my opinion, are undesirable. I‘d also think it highly inappropriate to compare that with the people in the Near and Middle East who have to live with such attacks daily. Measured on that yardstick, we are less affected in Europe, as bad as it may be for those directly affected in the individual cases. Most victims of Islamist attacks are Muslims. I think that we Europeans should not take ourselves too seriously, but rather, we should re-evaluate things with an international approach.
London
Travis Frain is a survivor of the Westminster Bridge attack. Since the attack, he has been involved in improving international commemorational events at different levels.
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You are actively involved in the remembrance work and have chosen a rather original approach. How come?
I’ve done community work in the past, and I’ve grown up with, and always sort of had, that value of volunteering instilled in me. When the attack happened, we had, I think, five other attacks just in the UK alone that year; it seemed to me that a community was forming, a community of people affected by terrorism, and not a community that anyone would ever choose to be in by any stretch.
The big thing for me is sort of like peer-to-peer support, because the support wasn’t really fully there for us, official support anywhere from the state. The commemoration wasn’t really a given. It wasn’t really guaranteed that we were going to have that by any stretch.
I ended up meeting a lot of people from other attacks before I even met anyone else from the attack I had been involved in. And so I was already having to, whether I like it or not, sort of create, I guess, my own community; my own network of people could share in that experience, really.
It was a long drawn-out experience. The initial experience was, what, 30 seconds to a minute long? But then, the consequences go for so long. It was sort of there that a few things happened over and over the, sort of, six months and the following. I think the key thing for me was that obviously there wasn’t really the sort of central support system that I guess you’d come
to expect.
How did the authorities try to support the survivors and remember the attack?
When I was discharged from the hospital, I moved back to Lancashire. There wasn’t a central body of search, and I found a lot of charities that were trying to fill the gaps as well, which obviously wasn’t easy for them, given that, for obvious reasons, they weren’t given the funding required to carry out this.
The closest we’ve got to a commemoration was that three weeks after the attack, there was what they call the service of hope that was held in Westminster Abbey. I was placed close to the front, because I had very physical and visible injuries, and the other lots of my group who’d all been injured as well, but one of them, who was wearing a sling underneath his jacket, was placed in the general audience.
There are two sorts of issues here. One is that the rest of the guys in my group, who were seated with the general audience, so they weren’t included. I know they weren’t the only ones either who were excluded from that. And the other issue being that every single politician that attended, as soon as the cameras turned off, went out and it was only the royal family that took part in a private meeting.
How did this evolve throughout the years?
Around Christmas time in 2017, we were to wonder what was going on in terms of the year anniversary. It was by this time as well that the Manchester Arena had already started talking about what they were going to do for the first anniversary, which was obviously a ringing of alarm bells for us because our attack happened two months before.
So, we were starting to worry. We started getting in touch with people to work out what was going on, but we weren’t really going too far, because, obviously, the biggest problem here was that none of us actually had contact with each other because there had never been a commemoration. When it got to March 2018, it was rescinded and they essentially decided that they were going to hold a dedication inside the House of Commons, but we weren’t allowed to attend; it was only for people who work in the House of Parliament.
I got in touch with my local MP and I sort of said, “What was going on with this? Is there any way we can change this?” He essentially offered to sneak me into the commemoration, but it just didn’t feel right because you’re doing a commemoration which is supposed to commemorate what happened to us. I felt like an impostor.
What did you do instead on the first anniversary of the attack?
I went down to London as well as a few of the victims who were in my own group. It was a very weird situation where we were laying flowers on the bridge, outside the parliament. I knew there was an event happening inside the parliament that we weren’t allowed to attend.
That obviously creates anger for a lot of people, myself included. There were about 15 of us that we hadn’t arranged prior, but we all sort of had an impromptu meeting because we’d all have the same idea, knowing that something was going on in parliament, knowing that we could attend and just still wanted to pay our respects.
It was the first time that we really got a chance to meet with all the other people affected and that’s where it really sort of started for me, because having met them, having seen their anger and their upset at the same, it reinforced something I had always felt, that something was wrong with not having enough of it. It gave me the willpower to start campaigning for this and trying to organise something myself.
Did the media and the public opinion more generally in the UK know about this?
There was just no sort of idea what we were going through. Even now, I can’t believe that myself and a number of other victims still receive death threats or abuse from people who said that the attacks are fake. When you speak to these people and they tell you to drink a cup of milk before bed or to get some fresh air and your sleep better, it goes completely down the wrong way because it’s just not suitable.
I didn’t want to talk to friends and family about this because I didn’t want them to have a sort of second-hand traumatization. I didn’t want them to know what I’ve seen, what I’ve been through, because I knew personally how horrific it was. I didn’t want to subject anyone else; anyone who didn’t have some professional training wasn’t prepared for that thing.
How did you come to terms with this situation, which came on top of a traumatic experience?
Over the years, I’ve come to be so connected with lots of other groups that, internationally, are sort of forming, in and of their own accord, by victims for victims of terrorism and are trying to help each other. We just talked about the abuse, the lack of support; these are things that no amount of professional training could prepare you for, you will only know about these if you’ve been through this. So that was worth sort of for me; I found a lot of support and the rest of the networks that were being built.
It’s a learning experience and that’s like something that nothing will surprise me anymore because it really is something that explains why I’ve wanted to try and get commemorations in place or Westminster, because the big thing I always say is that it’s not enough to say, “Oh! Well, it won’t happen to me,” because everyone believes that it will not happen.
For me anyway, it’s not just about us. It’s not just about sort of supporting. People have already been through this. It’s trying to get that in place and make sure there’s a precedent for attacks that sadly are inevitably to come to make sure they don’t work for the same thing.
What is your goal with this activism? Are you supported by any other actors in this?
My interest in this area has taken on a number of forms between 2017 and 2019. I was a trustee for the Peace Foundation, one of the charities that sort of attempted to fill the gaps in support. Then in 2018, I helped start a pressure group called Survivors Against Terror, who were doing a lot of work to try and compare them to these improvements that were talked about in terms of support. And then, most recently, I’ve been doing sort of a marathon to raise money for the Red Cross because they have what they call a solidarity fund.
Basically, when an attack happens, they pay out straight away. You have to remember, people often can’t work in a lot of changes to their lives in terms of their living arrangements; all these sort of things which sadly aren’t provided from any other source.
I’ve become involved in a number of ways, and the campaigning for that sort of commemoration to take place has been probably the most arduous of them all, because it’s not something that people see as a priority. It’s not the victims that have to fight to campaign to organise themselves, it is the government or it is local government as well. A sort of wider support is something that is needed.
It’s something that I had to try and influence the outcome panel with the support of the victims rather than of the wider public. To be honest, there wasn’t really a strategy to it. I was just thinking: If I keep talking about these issues, they’re going to get tired of me at one point and they’re actually going to engage with me and do something about this. I volunteered for food banks and things in the community. But none of that prepares you for trying to get a meeting with some official in some office.
How important is it to hold official remembrance ceremonies?
There are two main reasons why I felt it was important. The first, the recognition side of things; it’s unbelievable how difficult it is to try to explain how important that is for people to feel like what they’ve been through is beyond recognition. We talk a lot about how these attacks… they’re not an attack on the individual, they’re an attack on the state. Is it not the state that is responsible for ensuring that these people, if they’re being attacked, as a representative of the state, are not receiving lots of support and in this time recognition that they need?
The second reason was that Westminster, out of the five attacks that happened in the United Kingdom in 2017, was the most international. I can’t remember the number that was something more in 60 % of the people involved were not from the United Kingdom. my How must they feel? What was their impression of my country? And that, to me, was sort of like quite shameful. I thought the fact that they’d come to the United Kingdom, and that is their lasting memory. They’re sort of left to their own devices and there’s no collaboration. They weren’t invited back. They didn’t have healing experience of going back.
What did you achieve through your activism?
Eventually, we managed through the connections we made to get about 20 signatures of people affected by Westminster. We managed to arrange a meeting with the mayor when we sat down for a half-hour meeting, we talked about these issues. We got into the meeting, hoping that they would say, “OK, you know, this needs to happen and we will organise it,” but what essentially happened was that they said, “You organise it,” which was a blow-up first.
It didn’t matter to us because as long as we were getting something in place, we didn’t mind doing all the work ourselves as long as we had the official backing of the mayor.
It will take place this year on the anniversary and we’ve got funding for the plaque as well, that’s all created and ready for installing now. It was just really unfortunate that it became very clear that things were going in the direction of COVID and we made the decision to cancel the event. I don’t feel too bad about that decision, but it wasn’t easy. I think it’s really important that we get the plaque installed so that even if we have to cancel the actual events and the gathering, anyone who lives in London can simply just walk past and see it and pay their own respects.
Would you like to go on with your project? How would you like to develop it in the future?
The main thing for me is that I do want to draw a line under this and not necessarily move on, but I want to know that that’s something I’ve completed. There are a few other things that I’d like to campaign on. Once we have got a commemorative event in place, and once people have been able to meet with those affected, that will come the human factor as well. I’m hoping that there will be sort of an informal support network for many of the people to be able to meet other people affected, stay in communication.
I call for a central funding body that would regulate in the aftermath of attacks and other natural disasters; the idea being that it would be a bit more parity between victims. A central body that needs to regulate and also a central body that people know who to donate to. They know well, if an attack happens, this is where I can donate to for it to be distributed to them directly.
I was actually really involved with politics before the attack happened, and it actually made me quite disengaged with it, seeing the sort of indifference with which we were treated. I’ve become in many ways a one-issue voter and the one issue is terrorism; victims of terrorism and how to sort of address this. It’s not really something that is high on the agenda for any particular political party, it’s not really one that any particular party has a fantastic record with. For the work I’ve done with victims, I’ve met people from attacks as far back as the 1980s. I’m very involved at the moment with the counterterrorism side of things, I help out an advisory group for the police, both locally and nationally. I want to do something practical, something that is actually at the frontline of these issues.
What is the best way in your opinion to honour and remember the victims?
We have to look forward to the future and see what can we change so that these issues are not experienced by the people in future. I worry a lot about the sort of long-term effects of this, because obviously, we see in Northern Ireland the effects that the troubles have had on people there.
The real struggle is that they still have to deal with the aftermath and the effects of that, and I worry anyway because realistically, one of the biggest issues at the moment in Europe is Islamist terrorism and the fear of each other, and they’re not going away any soon.
So, I think we have to get a bit more glued in about how we can mitigate the effects of these attacks and work out how we can say, “Right, these attacks are going to happen.” It’s not enough to grandstand after attacks happen and say we won’t let them defeat us. We need to address the fact that they are doing this and be a bit more realistic about that.
Should there be common remembrance ceremonies, for instance on the European Day for Victims of Terrorism?
I absolutely agree with that because I’ve attended the European Remembrance Day of the victims of terrorism for the past two or three years. There’s a lot of worries within that group that, following Brexit, we’ll stop being invited to these events.
For me, anyway, I feel that regardless of your politics on the situation, regardless of whether you agree with Brexit or disagree with Brexit, we’re still connected and we’re still facing the same issues.
As far as I can see, the terrorists, the extremists, they don’t care about borders. They don’t care about whether you call yourself French or German or Christian or Muslim. They’re working together across borders to organise and carry out attacks.
We’ve got to do the same again, regardless of whether we’re part of the EU or not. We have to be helping each other out on these issues; we have to be showing solidarity across borders. It shouldn’t, by any means, be intended as replacing individual commemorations, but it should be supplementary.
I think the biggest difficulty there is that people will always say, “Why is it important? Why is it needed?”. The best way I would describe it is not to devalue by any sense; we don’t question each year when we have the Remembrance Day for soldiers for the World Wars because it absolutely should happen. The theatre of warfare changed today so that warfare is no longer countries attacking countries, it’s non-state actors attacking countries, and civilians have gradually become a target of warfare, if you even want to call it warfare, because it’s not groups attacking individuals as a sort of representative of the state.
It’s also about amplifying the survivors’ voices and making sure that it’s only one day, one day here. It’s not a lot, but it should be on that one day. We are remembering these awful atrocities and paying respects to these people.
Regardless of whether you consider yourself European or British, American, Canadian, we all have these shared experiences. We’ve all been injured in our efforts by very similar styles of attack and we have a lot in common. We should be taking note of that and be focussing on that, because it is the biggest thing we can do to provide a counterpoint to the hateful stuff that’s being spread by these guys carrying out these attacks.
Manchester
Nice
Pia Parolin lives in Nice and is a biologist, photographer, and author. She observes and processes the attack’s impact in her photography.
Where were you when the terror attack happened? What was your initial reaction?
I was at home, in the country around Nice, 12 miles away. But both my kids (16 and 17) and my former au pair girl Ilaria (age 21) were in Nice and wanted to watch the fireworks.
They took separate cars into the city because my kids wanted to pick up more friends. I would later learn that they stayed with those friends and did not go to the promenade. But my au pair girl was right in the middle of it. It was she who told me about the attack, without knowing what was going on. She called from her cell phone and said: „There‘s shooting and people are running everywhere, and I don‘t know what‘s going on. What should I do?“ I told her to stay calm and get to safety somewhere and that I would try to figure something out in the meantime. But there was no information; for easily 20 minutes, I couldn‘t find anything on the radio or on the Internet to the effect that there was even a problem in Nice. I flipped through all the radio stations, but nobody was talking about it. At the time nobody even imagined that something like that could happen. It‘s different today.
I was very upset, but I stayed objective. My au pair was crying in despair. I was able to reach my children, and they assured me they were in an apartment and hadn‘t heard anything. I told them just not to go outside.
My instinct was to drive into the city and get them all out of there. But I rethought that plan when it became apparent that it was an attack and they started talking about it on the radio. I wouldn‘t have been able to get into the city, and it would have only caused more confusion if everybody drove in to pick people up. So, I stayed home and stayed in contact with my children and the au pair over the phone for the whole night. Not one of us slept. Ilaria was eventually taken in by some nice people whom she didn‘t know, and she spent the night with them near the promenade.
My first reaction is hard to describe. I first tried to understand what was even going on. I felt great concern but also fear of jumping to a hasty conclusion because I hadn‘t gotten enough information. The last thing I wanted to do was start rumors and give them fuel. Therefore, I was very careful at first. And very worried.
From a distance, I arranged for Ilaria to get to safety and made sure my kids kept calm. Everybody was very upset and unsettled. The worst thing was lack of information. We didn‘t know what had even happened and how big it was. We knew nothing at all of the background.
On the next day, I drove into the city after all. It took many hours instead of the usual 20 minutes because everything was blocked off. I collected everybody, and as we arrived home, we first began to cry as we embraced each other for a long time. It was a very liberating moment. But it only lasted a few minutes because we all knew that many people would never have another hug.
How did you handle it? How did your project come to be?
Just like my children and Ilaria, I did not see the scenes of horror directly. That protected us all. We do not have horrific images in our heads, only thoughts. That is traumatic too, but it makes processing the trauma so much easier.
Our way of processing the trauma was to talk about it together, collect reliable information, and to try and understand it all without evoking feelings of hate, anger, or fear. That is the real challenge.
There were many, many discussions with the three kids at home and a lot of desperation on my part. The kids got over it faster than I did, even though I experienced everything from a distance. Children hop over shallow puddles, while adults fall into deep dark wells, a psychologist once explained to me.
The biggest moment of despair for me was before, with the attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris. In Nice, I was more prepared, in retrospect, because I had already gone through the thoughts. With Paris, it was the first time being cut so deep. Before that point, all the awful attacks had greatly moved me and confused me, but somehow, I always felt they were far away. I grew up hearing on TV about the attacks in Israel almost daily, and at some point, it almost started to become background noise. Scary. And now Paris. It‘s close by and in the same country and that changes everything. Suddenly, I was worried, and it took me a long time to even understand how I could, should, or indeed had to get a sense of the matter, how to react to it, and what options there even are. I am a scientist and am prudent not to judge or jump to conclusions about things. But that was hard for me this time, especially since I could never really be sure about the information and interpretations.
At some point, I understood that the perpetrators of terror have one thing in common: They want to destroy our free and diverse life, to scare us, splinter our society, and take our joie de vivre. And we cannot allow that. We must stand together and keep living our beautiful, free lives. Many friends stopped going out, mainly to cinemas and shopping malls. They even forbade their kids from going out. When I heard that I said: “Now more than ever.” I went out with my kids more than usual, and we deliberately celebrated our free and diverse life. That‘s how my colourful, life-loving photographic project came to be. I had no more inhibitions keeping me from enjoying life and letting everybody know.
The only difficult sticking point was how to think about the victims and their loved ones. I saw that conflict, namely that they might find it cynical when I celebrate the sun and the sea, the colours and the bustle of everyday life right where they lost their loved ones. So, I looked for the associations that concern themselves with the victims, and they were open to me because I was able to explain it to them correctly. And they didn‘t lump me in with the city of Nice, which very quickly put the sun and the sea, the colours and everyday life in the foreground. But there was the reason to sweep what had happened under the rug so that tourists would return to the French Riviera and its image could be rebuilt.
The city and I spread similar pictures but with very different motivations.
What made you decide on this particular mode of expression? What would you like to achieve with this art and/or this activity?
I decided on the form of expression—colourful, normal, blurry—because because it is ephemeral and random, like the passer-by in the attack.
The promenade always stood as a symbol of celebration of life. You go to the French Riviera because you‘re joyful at seeing the ocean and enjoy the glorious colours under the hot sun. That‘s what my pictures are supposed to show, not mourning or fear. We have to keep living our lives the same way, without fear.
For a long time, I felt this conflict that I wasn‘t paying enough respect to the victims and their loved ones. They must have seen it as an affront to simply return to normal life. That is why I gathered my forces after four years and did the second project, „L’amour triomphera toujours.“ It is my own addition in order to show that I do care about what happened and that I know all too well—in muted tones—the details on the promenade which stands laden with symbolism.
What I want to achieve with my art and this commitment is for people to return to their normal lives without fear, at least those who did not lose anybody in the attacks. I want to show that it‘s okay to enjoy life. The ocean and the colours are good for you, and, while they may not push aside what happened, we can‘t let it keep us from our lives like we‘re used to living, from deliberately seeking the joie de vivre again. And the joy of life also includes standing together against division and hate, against mass prejudice and categorisation.
Are you being supported by other institutions?
I am not really affected, so no.
Do you want to continue your project in the future? How do you want to evolve it?
I‘ve never stopped the project. I needed a few months to start, but since then I‘ve never really stopped. I drive to the promenade multiple times a week and take photos there. I‘m continuing both projects, especially the colourful one, and I want to develop it further. At this point, I am turning it into something bigger. I think I‘d like to write a book about it, or at least an article that puts everything in context and explains things in a way that helps other people. In this phase, I‘m considering how best to do that.
How do people in your city/country remember the terror attack? Is there a consensus?
Those who were never directly affected are still unsatisfied because they don‘t feel they‘re being taken seriously. They are still fighting for a proper memorial. The attack is being covered up because the city wants the tourists to come back and stop associating Nice with a place of terror. They too wish to show that colourful, normal life on the outside. But unlike me, they want to forget and repress what happened. The best they can do is paper over it with the appeal of the here and now. That‘s how I see it. That is not my intention with my pictures, I don‘t want to repress or hide anything.
There are no memorial places really worth mentioning, nor any rousing events. They want to forget, and they want tourism to flourish again. It may be different in other parts of France, but here it‘s the obvious message. Most inhabitants of the city seem to be in agreement with that, and they want to continue their privileged lives. But not everyone who was affected can do that.
Are you using your project to get involved? Why?
For a while I worked with the associations that cared for the victims. I took part in the donation drives and donated pictures for a photo book. More than once they asked me to take photos of the memorial places that the city approved. I did so and provided my photographs for free. I also sent printed photos to the associations in case they wanted to decorate their bare walls.
The city of Nice approves of me sending colourful images to the rest of the world, through exhibits in Germany (Magdeburg, Nuremberg, Bonn, Berlin, Dusseldorf) and Italy (Trieste, Sacile). But they only want the thriving image and none of the dialogue surrounding it. Therefore, I am doing it on my own.
How important are commemorative events in your opinion?
Such events are the most important thing. For the victims and their families, it is unending torment. Seeing that the others in the city stand together with them and mutually support one another while trying to move forward without hate is the only way to really come to terms with an attack in a lasting manner. The worst thing is to act like nothing happened; that is what happens when there are no commemorative events. They are then replaced by smaller, privately-organized events where everybody can express their unfiltered opinion. In a democracy you can‘t argue with that, but it is much harder to create a feeling of togetherness in this way and stop accusations, categorization, and hate. That works better in a „top down“ model. Commemorative events are such top-down events that are (hopefully) led by politicians who think about the long term and make a clear goal of promoting unity while restricting division and hatred.
What is the best way to do the work of memory?
The term „work of memory“ [Erinnerungsarbeit] contains two parts: We must remember and that requires work. Neither part is pleasant, both can be painful, sometimes very difficult. And that‘s why it‘s often kept small. I feel the greatest consolation when I see that (as happened to me after Charlie Hebdo) people of all backgrounds and faiths join hands, everybody stands together and commemorate the fallen and injured. And then people come together instead of further dividing themselves. We need help to see a positive vision of the future again, a future where freedom, equality, and brotherhood are a reality and not just a farce. And this help comes from the work of memory.
The opposite is repressing and burying everything six feet deep. That‘s when no processing is done, and nobody looks forward; rather, the fears remain that it could happen again, and certain groups of people become stigmatized. It heightens our fears when we remember what happened. But we make the effort of living with that. We learn step by step, and also together with others, how valuable it is to face what happened instead of simply erasing it—which is impossible.
To become aware of what happened means constantly making the small effort in our everyday lives, in every passing day, to be tolerant and open-minded, not to discriminate, and to intervene when necessary if someone isn‘t abiding by the rules of good coexistence. The work of memory promotes all of that.
What similarities/differences do you see to the other terror attacks perpetrated elsewhere in Europe?
The differences lie perhaps in the manner and motivation of the terror attacks. They can be radical right-wing or left-wing, religiously motivated or politically directed. The execution can be simple and amateurish, all the way to highly professional, either a lone wolf or a big operation. They are small attempts like a scream and a kitchen knife or large symbolic acts of horror like the beheading of a teacher or of people in a church.
The similarity is that the underlying idea is always the same: Divide the society and sow hatred and fear.
In your opinion, should there be collective commemorative events, for example on the European day for the victims of terrorism?
The differences in the manner and motivation of terrorism are only meaningful locally, but globally they are insignificant. The similarities, on the other hand, concern the nature of society, the foundation of our multicultural coexistence.
For this reason, collective commemorative events can also unite people across borders. Within Europe, we should use the symbol that we stand together regardless of what nationality or language or culture or belief we have.
I think the top-down approach has an advantage here, too: instead of letting diversity dominate from below, which eventually just confuses people, it is necessary to have a clearly directed, open, transparent, targeted attitude and policy from the top. That means collective commemorative events. Through remembrance, humility, unity, generosity, and tolerance, extremists and racists can be driven to the margins, and preachers of hatred and potential perpetrators can be discouraged because everybody else is standing together.