The terrorism memorial museum should therefore not see the light of day. The threat had been looming for several weeks, it has now been officially communicated to the main stakeholders. On Friday, December 6, the historian Henry Rousso and Elisabeth Pelsez, responsible for the prefiguration of this museum, learned during a meeting in Matignon, “organized by the Prime Minister’s office” that “for budgetary constraints” the plan initially planned no longer held. The decision was taken during a ministerial meeting held on November 23, 2024 and to which they were not invited. The project was announced by Emmanuel Macron himself in 2018.
Several decisions were announced on Friday and communicated this Monday to the memorial teams by Elisabeth Pelsez and Henry Rousso in an email that we were able to consult. First of all, “the Suresnes site, a former outdoor school, where the Memorial Museum was to be located, is abandoned”. A fallback solution is proposed: a Memorial “articulated with the garden of memory that the Paris town hall designed with the victims’ associations Life for Paris and 13onze15”. Today dedicated to the victims of the attacks of November 13, 2015, it could pay tribute to a larger number of victims. Finally, it is proposed to the GIP formed for the occasion “to design traveling and temporary exhibitions in places that could be offered to them by the ministries involved in the project”. One month before the commemorations of the Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher attacks, as the tenth anniversary of the November 13 attacks approaches, the trial of those responsible for the assassination of Samuel Paty is being held at the Palais de Justice from Paris, the calendar is curious to say the least. Especially coming from a resigned government.
In reaction to this announcement, Henry Rousso stated in Le Figaro: “We will continue to fight for the Terrorism Museum-Memorial project.” In the email addressed to the teams, Elisabeth Pelsez announces the “desire to continue this project”, “being aware that the orientations proposed by Matignon cannot constitute a new road map”. The victims’ associations, all associated in the Orientation Observatory of the future museum under the leadership of François Molins, had feared such a scenario for several days already. Little information had been given to them during this year 2024.
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