She will have put her life at the service of the victims of terrorism. Françoise Rudetzki, herself seriously injured in an attack in 1983, died on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday in Paris, at the age of 73, we learned Wednesday from her family.
“Until the end, she campaigned for the recognition and care of victims of attacks,” said her daughter Deborah Rudetzki. Emmanuel Macron hailed the “life of pain, battles and victories” of “a tutelary figure for all the victims of attacks”, who drew “his sensitivity from his personal history”.
A lawyer, Françoise Rudetzki had created SOS Attentats, the first association for the defense of victims of acts of terrorism, in December 1985, the date marking the start of a wave of deadly attacks linked to the conflict in the Middle East.
As early as 1986, it had obtained the creation of the Guarantee Fund for victims of acts of terrorism, financed by a small levy on each property insurance contract, a guarantee extended in 1990 to all victims of criminal offences. She remained a member of the board of directors of this organization until her death.
A memorial for all victims of terrorism
Other advances, it had the victims of terrorism recognized the status of civilian victims of war and the possibility for associations to file civil suits during the trials. Françoise Rudetzki had also worked to have a memorial erected for all the victims of terrorism. This monument, an anonymous decapitated woman, will be inaugurated by Jacques Chirac at the Invalides, in Paris, in 1998. And in 2018, she had defended the creation of a National Center for Resources and Resilience (CN2R), intended to improve the taking caring for victims of traumatic events. Finally, she was also a member of the prefiguration mission of the terrorism memorial museum which is due to see the light of day in 2027.
Born in Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1948 to parents who had survived the Second World War, Françoise Rudetzki had been the victim of a bomb attack on December 23, 1983 at the Grand Véfour restaurant in Paris, where she was celebrating her tenth birthday. marriage with her husband. The explosion threw up a metal door that crushed his legs.
Her Triple penalty
Operated on dozens of times to treat her injuries, she had contracted HIV and the hepatitis C virus during a transfusion. She had recounted this ordeal in a biography published in 2004, Triple penaltyan allusion to the attack, to his contamination, killed for a long time, and to the disappearance of part of his family in the Shoah, a drama that came to the surface during his hospitalization.
Subsequently, court reporters often came across this elegant woman with brown curls at hearings at the Paris courthouse, where she moved on crutches, then in an electric wheelchair. “We measure the loss that this will represent for the victims”, underlined Frédéric Bibal, lawyer for several victims of the attacks of November 13, 2015, announcing his death at the trial of these attacks. His funeral will take place in the strictest family privacy.