Individuals lay flowers and light-weight candles in tribute to the victims of the 2015 Paris assaults at a short lived memorial at Place de la République in Paris on Wednesday.
Ludovic Marin/AFP by way of Getty Photos
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Ludovic Marin/AFP by way of Getty Photos
PARIS — Arthur Dénouveaux’s recollections of Nov. 13, 2015, aren’t precisely hazy. Nor are they good.
“What I bear in mind from that night time are a number of very clear photos,” he says.
Dénouveaux was considered one of round 1,500 individuals contained in the Bataclan live performance corridor to see the American rock band Eagles of Loss of life Steel, when gunmen linked to the Islamic State opened fireplace.
What he remembers subsequent are fragments.
There was the muzzle flash popping out of the gunmen’s Kalashnikovs. Being pushed to the ground as the gang scrambled. A lady “fully misplaced,” staring towards the shooters earlier than others pulled her down.
Then Dénouveaux remembers crawling outdoors.
“Discovering myself beneath the night time sky in Paris,” he says, “and saying to myself, ‘Hey, I am free once more.'”
Throughout Paris that night time, 130 individuals have been killed at cafés, the nationwide soccer stadium and the Bataclan. Ten years later, France remains to be wrestling with methods to bear in mind the deadliest assault on its soil in fashionable historical past and methods to reside with it.
The nation has constructed an in depth system of remembrance. There have been books, documentaries, plaques and memorials throughout the town. A landmark 10-month terrorism trial resulted in 2022 with the conviction of 20 males, together with the one surviving member of the group that carried out the assaults.
Arthur Dénouveaux is the president of Life for Paris, a assist group for victims of the Nov. 13, 2015, assaults. He says the group plans to disband after the tenth anniversary.
Rebecca Rosman for NPR
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Rebecca Rosman for NPR
On Thursday, President Emmanuel Macron visited every of the assault websites earlier than inaugurating a brand new memorial backyard behind Paris Metropolis Corridor. On the Place de la République this week, individuals positioned flowers and lit candles at a makeshift memorial.
For some, like Paris resident Anaelle Baheux, who lives simply steps from one of many cafés attacked that night time, these rituals nonetheless matter.
“It is reassuring to see that individuals did not neglect what occurred,” she says.
However even because the rituals deepen, new analysis exhibits the small print of that night time are already fading from collective reminiscence — and a examine is providing insights into why some individuals get well from post-traumatic stress dysfunction, or PTSD, extra simply than others.
Denis Peschanski, a historian, has been co-leading a 12-year examine analyzing how the Nov. 13 assaults are remembered throughout French society. The mission has adopted almost 1,000 individuals — survivors, victims’ households, first responders and bizarre residents — interviewing them at common intervals to trace how their recollections change over time.
“It is an attention-grabbing query, why did individuals neglect,” Peschanski says.
He says one sample stands out: Whereas most individuals nonetheless bear in mind the Bataclan vividly, their recollections of what occurred on the cafés and the nationwide stadium are “foggier,” if not forgotten altogether.
For survivors from these websites, Peschanski calls this a “double peine” — a double punishment. They reside not solely with trauma, but in addition with the sensation that their a part of the story has light from public reminiscence.
Alongside the nationwide reminiscence examine, a crew of neuroscientists has spent the previous decade finding out trauma on a person stage, monitoring about 200 survivors by common MRI scans and psychological assessments.
Pierre Gagnepain, one of many lead researchers, says early therapy approaches usually discouraged the thought of deliberately attempting to suppress traumatic recollections.
“For a very long time, individuals thought that suppression was not good, that attempting to dam reminiscence made issues even worse,” Gagnepain says. “Individuals used to say it might trigger much more intrusive recollections.”
However their preliminary findings counsel the alternative: suppression can, in reality, be a part of restoration.
“What’s necessary to know is that forgetting — or suppression — does not imply you do not bear in mind what occurred to you,” Gagnepain says. “It is about making the reminiscence much less current, much less vivid, much less accessible. Individuals can nonetheless describe what they went by. It is simply that the reminiscence turns into much less intrusive, much less invading.”
The science means that reminiscence blurs not as a result of individuals do not care, however as a result of the thoughts adapts.
MRI findings from this examine present that when reminiscence management networks start to get well — which means when sure neural connections are strengthened and the mind’s capability to inhibit intrusive ideas is restored — survivors of traumatic occasions are much less more likely to endure persistent intrusive signs of PTSD.
The Marianne Statue at Place de la République in Paris lit up with the colour of the French flag on Nov. 12, 2025.
Rebecca Rosman for NPR
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Rebecca Rosman for NPR
However not everybody. A few third of survivors within the examine stay “power” circumstances, caught in a state the place worry and reminiscence stay tightly linked.
Bataclan survivor Arthur Dénouveaux wasn’t a part of the MRI analysis, however he acknowledges the excellence. He says his private recollections stay accessible with out overwhelming him.
“You recognize, I can contact them. I can really feel them,” he says. “It isn’t simply one thing out of skinny air. My physique was there. My thoughts was there.”
For the previous decade, Dénouveaux has served as president of Life for Paris, a assist group created weeks after the assaults to assist survivors navigate medical care, forms and years of authorized proceedings that adopted.
From the beginning, he says, the group meant to disband after the tenth anniversary.
“It appears like that time limit when you possibly can say, ‘No, I am not a sufferer anymore. I’ve been a sufferer. I was a sufferer,'” he says.
That does not imply forgetting — for Dénouveaux or for France. Shifting ahead, he says, is its personal form of therapeutic.
