France struggling to keep collective memory of Paris terrorist attacks alive

On November 13, 2015, a string of coordinated terrorist attacks unfolded across Paris, with gunfire erupting on café terraces, explosions outside a football stadium, and a mass shooting at the Bataclan concert hall. The assault, orchestrated by the Islamic State group, left 132 people dead and more than 350 injured, marking the deadliest attack in modern French history.

A decade later, France has created a vast landscape of remembrance — books, documentaries, plaques, and memorials throughout the city. Yet research suggests the nation is struggling with how to accurately remember both the attacks and the circumstances surrounding them, as details from that night are already fading from collective memory, according to an article by NPR.

President Emmanuel Macron visited each of the attack sites before opening a new memorial garden behind Paris City Hall on this week's anniversary, but new studies indicate that France continues to grapple with how best to commemorate the events.

Denis Peschanski, a historian, has been co-leading a 12-year study on how the Nov. 13 attacks are remembered across French society. The project follows nearly 1,000 people — including survivors, victims’ relatives, first responders, and everyday citizens — interviewing them at regular intervals to observe how their recollections change over time.

“It's an interesting question, why did people forget,” Peschanski says.

One pattern is especially striking, he notes: while most people continue to recall the storming of the Bataclan with clarity — the site of the vast majority of that night’s killings — their memories of the café shootings and the attack at the national stadium are “foggier,” if not missing altogether.

For survivors from those locations, Peschanski describes this as a “double peine” — a double punishment. They carry the trauma while also feeling that their experience has faded from the public’s awareness.

Former President François Hollande, who led France at the time of the attacks, spoke to French media on the eve of the 10th-anniversary commemorations. He called the ceremonies painful but essential, as they honor the victims, sustain memory, and help prevent forgetting. They also serve as a testimony to both the living and future generations about an atrocity that devastated families and deeply affected French society.

Hollande emphasized that the commemorations should also serve an educational purpose: prompting the country to reflect on what has strengthened it, what challenges persist today, and how trust in institutions, law enforcement, and social cohesion can be maintained. From this perspective, he said, such a ceremony is a political act aimed at fostering unity.

Parallel to the national memory project, a team of neuroscientists has spent the past decade studying trauma on an individual level, monitoring about 200 survivors through regular MRI scans and psychological evaluations.

Pierre Gagnepain, one of the lead researchers, says that earlier therapeutic approaches often discouraged the deliberate suppression of traumatic memories.

“For a long time, people thought that suppression was not good, that trying to block memory made things even worse,” Gagnepain says. “People used to say it would cause even more intrusive memories.”

However, their early findings point to the opposite: suppression can play a role in healing.

“What's important to understand is that forgetting — or suppression — doesn't mean you don't remember what happened to you,” Gagnepain says. “It's about making the memory less present, less vivid, less accessible. People can still describe what they went through. It's just that the memory becomes less intrusive, less invading.”

The research suggests that memories fade not out of indifference but as part of the brain’s adaptive response.

MRI results from the study show that when memory-control networks begin to recover — when certain neural connections strengthen and the brain’s ability to inhibit intrusive thoughts is restored — survivors are less likely to experience persistent intrusive symptoms associated with PTSD.

But this recovery is not universal, as the article points out that roughly one-third of participants remain “chronic” cases, trapped in a state where fear and memory stay intertwined.

By Nazrin Sadigova