10 years since the Merah attacks. A memorial journey in Toulouse, linked to the Memorial Museum of Terrorism?
By Guillaume Laurent
Published on
Whereas Toulouse and Montauban commemorate this week the 10 years of the attacks committed by Mohammed Merah, the alternative municipal opposition group (AMC) – which will also take part in the ceremonies on Sunday – several proposals for “to perpetuate the memory” of this drama, so that “it never happens again”.
Get involved in the future Memorial Museum of Terrorism?
At the next municipal council, these elected officials will propose a wish, in order to “ask that the municipality of Toulouse supports and is involved to manage in the creation of Terrorism Memorial Museum, which should open 2027. It was the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron who announced its creation, following the first report of the prefiguration mission reported by the historian Henry Rousso, research director at the CNRS and known for his work on collective memory.
We would like the city of Toulouse to apply to participate in the museum’s bodies”, specifies Francois Piquemalpresident of the AMC group in the Metropolis, who calls for Toulouse to “ask to sit on certain bodies of the museum, because I imagine that there will be a college of elected officials”.
And also a memorial journey?
To “complete the process”, and for “that a place of memory also exist on our territory”, the elected representatives of the AMC group will also “ask setting up a memorial trail in our city, in order to honor the victims of the attacks in Toulouse and Montauban”.
“We would like this course to be designed in connection with the Memorial Museum, but also with associations, relatives of victims, and local elected officials”, explains François Piquemal, who wishes “that a group be formed” for this purpose.
“So that there is a place of reflection and memory on our city particularly affected by terrorism, it seems interesting to us that there is a branch, or an extension, of the Memorial Museum in Toulouse, so that we never don’t forget that it was here that the wave of jihadist attacks that marked the 2010s began.”
Professor of history and geography at the professional high school in working life, François Piquemal also sees in it “a means of offering popular education » to the inhabitants of the Pink City, and imagine, beyond the homage to the victims, a place of reflection which also makes it possible to “understand” how these tragedies could have occurred.
A memorial museum located in Hauts-de-Seine
The future Terrorism Memorial Museum marks the wish of public authorities and victims’ associations to pay tribute to all those who have been affected by terrorism in all its forms. It is designed as a place of memory and history on this violence of war in times of peace which has marked French society as well as many other countries since the 1970s.
The prefiguration mission of the project indicates that “the Terrorism Memorial Museum places at the center of its project the victims, the survivors, the physically and psychologically injured, the first responders and first-line helpers (firefighters, first-aid workers, police officers and gendarmes , doctors, neighbours). It integrates into its structures and its governance the associations of victims and assistance to victims as well as the municipalities affected by the attacks”.
Located in Suresnes (Hauts-de-Seine), on the hill of Mont-Valérien, near the Memorial of France Combattante, a high place of national memory, the Memorial Museum of Terrorism affirms its national dimension and its accessibility to a very large French and foreign public.
An “important place” for victims’ associations
“This Memorial Museum of Terrorism must be a place recognition, testimony and empathy where the victims could express themselves and be listened to”, further believe the prefiguration mission of the project, which judges “that to honor the victims is also to understand why they were the target of terrorist acts and to give meaning to their ordeal.
“For all these reasons”, the AMC group is therefore going to propose to the next city council that the city of Toulouse, which has paid a heavy price in this matter, support the project for a Memorial Museum of Terrorism, and that it implies, “in particular by ensuring that a important place be left to the victims’ associations”.
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