This Thursday, France paid an emotional tribute to the 132 people killed and more than 400 injured a decade ago during the attacks perpetrated by three jihadist commandos against cafes, restaurants and the Bataclan concert hall in Paris.
Throughout the day, survivors and families of the victims paid tribute to the dead and wounded at each site of the worst attack on French soil since World War II, laying wreaths of flowers and observing a minute of silence. At each location, the names of all the deceased were read.
He main tribute sponsored by the Paris City Council to the 132 victims – two are added to the 130 of that fateful day in 2015 because two Bataclan survivors subsequently committed suicide – opened this Thursday with an instrumental version of Hells Bellsby AC/DC, on an electronic organ, which was intertwined with the ringing of bells from the Notre-Dame cathedral and other churches in the capital.
The ceremony is followed in a specially installed box by some 1,500 guestsamong them the French president, Emmanuel Macron, members of the Government; the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgoas well as for the survivors of the attacks, the families of the victims and the professionals who were on the front lines that fateful night.
Conceived in close collaboration with the two victims’ associations, 13eleven15 y Life in Paris (which will dissolve at the end of the ceremony), the tribute moved between spectacle and sobriety, dedicated to the dead, the living and the “heroes” of that night (policemen, firefighters and doctors).
The artistic director of the tribute is Thierry Reboul, who was executive director of the opening ceremonies of the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2024.
The legendary hard rock title of the Australian band was performed by the French-Cameroonian Ann Shiley on her electronic organ, at the foot of the so-called tree of justice, a centenary elm located in the center of the Garden of November 13, 2015, located in the square of the Church of Saint-Gervais, next to the Paris Consistory and two steps from the Notre-Dame cathedral.
Minutes before the start of the ceremony, the great bells of Notre-Dame, known by the names of Emmanuel and Marie, were ringing in unison with those of Saint-Sulpice, Sacré-Coeur, Saint-Germain, Saint-Eustache and other churches in Paris, as a symbol of “union” in memory of the 132 people murdered by three jihadist commandos and of the “shock” at the “magnitude of evil” of that “long night of anguish”, said today the archbishop of Paris, Laurent Ulrich.
That pain for the 132 murdered was also reflected in the image of light that emerged from the tree of justice of a Mariana -one of the symbols of the French Republic- crying.
The first to speak in this tribute was Philippe Duperron, president of 13onze15, who launched a message this Thursday to combat attempts to fracture society and “to build security without sacrificing freedom.”
Duperron, father of one of the 132 people who died as a result of these attacks, denounced that “many politicians here, in Europe and elsewhere, beyond irresponsible presidents, are dedicated to sowing the seeds of discord and disunity.” He also criticized that social networks “flood” young people with “hateful content.”