They were held in a small committee last year, the Covid-19 pandemic requires. The commemorations of the attacks of November 13, 2015 regained their public form on Saturday, in Saint-Denis and Paris. Tribute ceremonies and moments of contemplation are planned at the various sites of the attacks, which left 130 dead and hundreds injured six years ago. This anniversary is special, because it takes place in the midst of the trial of these attacks, which began on September 8 at the palace of the Île de la Cité. The hearing was suspended on Friday, so that the debates do not interfere with this moment of remembrance.
This trial is the second to be filmed “for history” in terms of terrorism, after that of the January 2015 attacks. It participates, with the commemorations and ongoing research programs, in building a collective memory around these attacks . A memorial museum dedicated to terrorism should also see the light of day in 2027 in Suresnes (Hauts-de-Seine). Historian Henry Rousso, who heads the project, has worked on the history of the Vichy regime, the memory of World War II and, more recently, the globalization of memory practices. For franceinfo, he returns to the evolution of the place of memory in the traumas of our societies, concomitant with new approaches to the status of victim.
Franceinfo: This year, the commemorations of the November 13 attacks take on a special tone because they are being held in the midst of a trial. How do these two memories, that of the Nation and that of justice, fit together?
Henry Rousso: The fact of putting on the same level the process and the commemorations is revealing of our time, because these two events relate to two very different registers and do not have at all the same function. The trial must establish responsibilities and facts, it takes place only once [en première instance]. Its closure is not the closure of suffering or of memory. The commemoration is an anniversary. It takes place every year, at or around the same time and in the same place. Its function is ritualistic: to commemorate is to remember together. It is important for the victims but also for the national community.
Even if these two events have different functions, was there not a form of communion between the victims during the five weeks of testimony by the civil parties?
Sure. I was very struck by these powerful testimonies. The trial of the November 13 attacks is part of a long evolution of the place of memory and the victim in justice and our societies. But we changed scale, by the nature of the events and the number of victims.
“This is why it is also organized to be a place of memory, of expression of the mourning and the suffering endured, to show how much it is still alive. It is the past that does not pass. “
Henry roussoto franceinfo
After the verdict, a stage closes and the victims find themselves more isolated but having lived a very important moment of communion.
Can this memorial dimension of the trial divert it, at one time or another, from its primary function: that of judging men?
We are in societies of speech and justice has become an essential place for victims to speak out, and rightly so. Despite everything, the trial has primarily a criminal function. It is really a question of judging and punishing but there is also a concern for analysis, deconstruction, understanding, necessary for legal action. It is true that we observed a reversal in the usual course, with the interrogation of personality of the defendants carried out after the hearing of the civil parties. But let’s wait for the rest [le procès doit durer encore sept mois]. I have the feeling that the words of the accused will be heard. The importance of this trial is also the place we give them. It is the considerable strength of our democracies.
How has this duty of remembrance gradually imposed itself in our societies and within the confines of our courts?
The Shoah made memory a central value in our democratic societies. It is above all the fight against the impunity of the criminals and the denial around this genocide which generated new policies of memory. Forgetting was quite widespread since ancient Greece. The Edict of Nantes, which put an end to the religious wars in 1598, is a form of oblivion. On the legal level, it translates into amnesty. It’s a social fiction, we pretend it never existed. This way of seeing things is now banned. We are trying to extend the limitation periods more and more, with the idea of a justice that should no longer have limits, as it does not have for crimes against humanity.
The very notion of a duty to remember, born in the 1990s, comes after the memorial action of those who fought for the recognition of crimes against Jews, such as the Klarsfeld couple. This term came to dress a practice. Little by little, the duty to remember has become a right to remember. Commemoration in France obeys a principle of equality before history. The commemoration of the Shoah is now that of all genocides. The national day of homage to the victims of terrorism has been set for March 11 to align with European day and the anniversary date of the Madrid attacks in 2004. There is a political message of openness and universalism.
How to explain the temporal shortening between collective traumas and their inscription in a memory process?
The World War II trials were very late. Those of Klaus Barbie and Maurice Papon took place in France almost half a century after the events [en 1987 et 1997]. Given the immensity of the crimes committed, this justice has by definition been very largely imperfect. But it was a question of putting an end to the immunity of a certain number of war criminals and their accomplices and of putting in the public place a memory which had not had the possibility of expressing itself before, in giving voice to victims.
“With these trials for memory and the start of the terrorist wave in the 1980s, the place of the victim has become central in the public space. What is at stake is a form of national recognition and reparation. Because through the victims of contemporary terrorism, it is a Nation that is affected. “
Henry Rousso, historianto franceinfo
Their support was thus accelerated with laws – the first anti-terrorism law dates from 1986 -, commemorative days – 14 were created after 1993 -, the creation of a Guarantee Fund and a secretariat. dedicated state [devenu une délégation ministérielle], medals and trials.
In terrorism matters, trials take place very quickly. Unlike the United States with September 11, France attaches great importance to it because justice has a protective function. When the Nuremberg trials took place at the end of 1945, Nazi Germany was defeated. The terrorist threat is constant and the volume of judicial treatment of attacks or attempted attacks is linked to the fact that those responsible or those who ordered them can act again.
The Terrorism Memorial Museum, which is part of this evolution, will it not play the role, in a way, of a memory of memory?
It is designed on the knowledge-recognition model. Knowledge – the museum part – is necessary for recognition – the memorial part. The main object is the history of terrorism in all its forms since the French revolution but especially from the 1960s to the present day, in France and internationally. But the emergence of the new attention to the victim will have its place. It is also planned to offer modules on the memory of terrorism, individual and collective. The photos of the places of commemoration will be exhibited as well as the objects of ephemeral memory around the attacks, flowers, drawings, candles. In the case of November 13, they became permanent traces collected by the archives of Paris.
How will the trial of the November 13th attacks, which itself participates in this “memorization”, be integrated?
I am in the process of drafting the scientific and cultural program for the memorial for March 11, and we insist that our work falls within the context of this extraordinary trial. It will of course have a very important place, like that of the attacks of January 2015. We hope to be able to access the films of these two trials, when all the appeals are closed. We are also in the process of building up a collection of seals of justice, but here too, the procedure must be closed, which is the case for the Toulouse and Montauban attacks in 2012 for example. We want to show that terrorism has been part of our societies for a very long time and has shaped them.