At the specially composed court of assizes in Paris,
“Not a day goes by without thinking that the irreparable can still strike. “The irreparable burst into the life of Patricia Barbé, on October 3, 1980. “I was going to be 16 years old”, she breathes, her hands clinging to the bar of the specially composed assize court. His father, Jean-Michel, driver for a Jewish family, was waiting outside the synagogue on rue Copernic, in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, when a bomb exploded in front of the religious building. He died instantly, like three other passers-by. Forty-six people were injured.
To the magistrates who are judging – in his absence – Hassan Diab, suspected of having made and planted the bomb, Patricia Barbé, black cardigan and bobbed hair, tells how this event “upset and built [sa] life “. She chose to read a letter to the court to recount this fear that never left her: “And if horror struck again? A fear that lives in her every time she kisses her children. However, she takes care not to do “too much” so as not to worry them and make them carry “this acute awareness of a life forever weakened”. This is what is striking, this Thursday morning, listening to these testimonies, it is the gaping trauma. Four decades have not appeased anything.
“She was traumatized until the end of her days”
At the helm, the throat of Gérard Barbier, 70, is knotted, his voice quavers, when he retraces this disastrous evening. That evening, he was with his parents and his brother in the household appliance store that the family ran, just across from the synagogue. “It explodes. Leaning on his crutch, he struggles to continue, overcome by emotion. A silence invades the courtyard. He resumed. “I did not hear the noise but I suffered like an electric shock, my body was extremely shaken. “If he and his brother were relatively untouched physically, his parents are seriously injured. The vital prognosis of his mother will remain engaged for ten days. “She was traumatized until the end of her days,” he insists.
The time was different: no psychological care was offered. Those who have benefited from it have taken the process themselves, sometimes years later. “I didn’t consider myself a victim at first because no one had died,” explains Corinne Adler, who was celebrating her bat mitzvah that day with four other teenagers. It was only thirty years after the events – and after being contacted by the association of victims of terrorism – that she decided to file a civil action.
Investigators at the time did not take the trouble to identify the approximately 300 worshipers who were in the synagogue, even less to interview them and guide them in their efforts. “Looking at the case, we were flabbergasted by the way the victims were treated,” says one of the two general attorneys. What are the consequences of this lack of consideration? Corinne Adler cannot help but make the connection with the suicide, five years ago, of the teenager who celebrated her bat-mitzvah with her, after years of “deep depression”.
“We did not manage to have a psychological interview”
Pierre Pollashek, 81, even discovered this Thursday, in full hearing, that the photo of his son was on a double page in Paris Match. We see the dazed boy in front of a victim. “My son saw me bleeding and was never counted as a victim when he was 9 years old. We did not manage to have a psychological interview, ”laments the octogenarian, long white hair held back in a ponytail and thin-rimmed glasses on his nose. That day, he was in Gérald Barbier’s store with his son to buy light bulbs. When the explosion occurs, the window explodes, the sheet metal ceiling literally falls on their heads. If the child is relatively unaffected, he received dozens of shards of glass, especially in the face. He almost loses his sight.
Pierre Pollashek makes no secret of it, his life and that of his family exploded after the attack. “It was too much”, explains this son of Austrian Jews, whose father died deported during the Second World War. He managed to escape from a camp with his mother. After the attack, his wife left with their daughter, no longer supporting Paris. “I was left alone with my son. Listening to him, the latter remains deeply marked. “It influenced his psychology, he drags it like a ball and chain, 42 and a half years later there are quite heavy traces”, he insists, notably putting his celibacy on this account. “It’s never too late to take this into account”, tries the president, indicating in particular the presence of psychologists from France Victims Association.
time and absence
If time does not heal, it causes the witnesses and relatives of the victims to disappear. Only about twenty people have declared themselves civil parties in this case. Many of the victims or their relatives died. There will be no one, for example, to discuss the fate of Hilario Lopes Fernandes and Philippe Bouissou, killed in the explosion. Rabbi Michael Williams, who officiated for 40 years in the synagogue, nevertheless recalled an anecdote: every year for “twenty or twenty-five years”, the parents of Philippe Bouissou, who was 22 at the time of the attack, came every October 3 at dusk to lay flowers in front of the synagogue. “When we were tempted to forget the impact of the attack, their emotional presence reminded us of its intensity. A way of putting these forgotten victims back at the heart of the Assize Court.