France marks 10 years after Paris Bataclan terrorist attacks : NPR

PARIS — Arthur Denuvo's memories of November 13, 2015 are not entirely hazy. And they are not perfect.

“I remember some very clear photographs from that night,” he says.

Denuvo was one of about 1,500 people who had gone to the Bataclan concert hall to see American rock band Eagles of Death Metal perform when militants linked to the Islamic State opened fire.

Then he remembers fragments.

A muzzle flash was heard from the militants' Kalashnikov assault rifles. He was pushed to the floor as the crowd scrambled. The girl was “completely lost” looking at the shooters before others pulled her down.

Denuvo then remembers crawling outside.

“I find myself under the night sky in Paris,” he says, “and I say to myself, 'Hey, I'm free again.'

That night, across Paris, 130 people were killed in cafes, the national football stadium and the Bataclan. Ten years later, France is still trying to decide how to remember and live with the deadliest attack on its soil in modern history.

The country has built an extensive memory system. There were books, documentaries, plaques and memorials all over the city. The landmark 10-month terrorism trial ended in 2022 with the conviction of 20 people, including the sole surviving member of the group that carried out the attacks.

On Thursday, President Emmanuel Macron visited each of the sites of the attacks and then opened a new memorial garden behind Paris City Hall. People laid flowers and lit candles at a makeshift memorial in Republic Square this week.

For some, like Parisian Anaëlle Bae, who lives just steps from one of the cafes attacked that night, these rituals still have meaning.

“It's nice to see that people haven't forgotten what happened,” she says.

But even as the rituals deepen, new research shows that details of that night are already fading from collective memory—and the study offers insight into why some people recover from post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, more easily than others.

Denis Peschansky, a historian, is co-leading a 12-year study examining how the November 13 attacks are remembered in French society. The project followed nearly 1,000 people—survivors, victims' families, first responders and ordinary citizens—who interviewed them regularly to see how their memories changed over time.

“The interesting question is why people forgot,” Peschanski says.

One pattern stands out, he said: while most people still remember the Bataclan well, their memories of what happened in the cafe and at the national stadium are “more hazy”, if not forgotten altogether.

For survivors in these places, Peschansky calls it “double punishment– double punishment. They live not only with trauma, but also with the feeling that their part of history has been erased from public memory.

Along with the study of national memory, team of neuroscientists has spent the last decade studying trauma at the individual level, tracking nearly 200 survivors through regular MRI scans and psychological assessments.

Pierre Gagnépin, one of the lead researchers, says early treatment approaches often prevent intentional suppression of traumatic memories.

“For a long time, people thought that repression was bad, that trying to block memory only made things worse,” says Gannepine. “People used to say it would bring back more intrusive memories.”

But their initial results suggest otherwise: suppression may actually be part of recovery.

“It's important to understand that forgetting—or repressing—does not mean you don't remember what happened to you,” says Gannepain. “It's about making memories less real, less vivid, less accessible. People can still describe what they went through. The memories just become less intrusive, less intrusive.”

Science suggests that memories blur not because people don't care, but because the mind adapts.

The MRI results of this study suggest that when memory control networks begin to recover—that is, when certain neural connections are strengthened and the brain's ability to suppress intrusive thoughts is restored—people who have experienced traumatic events are less likely to suffer from persistent intrusive symptoms of PTSD.

But not all. About a third of the study's survivors remain “chronically” ill, stuck in a state where fear and memory remain closely linked.

Bataclan survivor Arthur Denuvo was not involved in the MRI study, but he recognizes the difference. He says his personal memories remain accessible but do not overwhelm him.

“You know, I can touch them. I can feel them,” he says. “It’s not just something out of thin air. My body was there. My mind was there.”

For the past decade, Denuvo has served as president of Life for Paris, a support group created in the weeks after the attacks to help survivors cope with medical care, bureaucracy and the years of legal proceedings that followed.

According to him, from the very beginning the group intended to break up after their 10th anniversary.

“It's like that moment where you can say, 'No, I'm not a victim anymore. I was a victim. I used to be a victim,” he says.

This does not mean oblivion – neither for Denuvo nor for France. Moving forward, he says, is itself a kind of healing.