The Museum and Memorial of Terrorism will have a national focus.
However, it will also have an international dimension and will seek to be universalist in scope.
Not only will the tribute cover all victims impacted in France, regardless of their nationality, as well as French victims of attacks abroad; it will also be embedded in a European perspective. This echoes the alignment of the French National Day for Victims of Terrorism with the European Remembrance Day for Victims of Terrorism on March 11th.
Indeed, it is impossible to understand modern terrorism outside of its international dimension, connections between organizations based in different countries, and the recent turn toward global terrorism. Internationalization and globalization have given rise to police and legal responses that go beyond borders. The globalization of terrorism has also amplified the collective outpouring of grief for major events. For the historian Pierre Nora, these events—September 11, 2011, in New York; March 11, 2004, in Madrid; January 7th and 8th, and November 13, 2015, in Paris; July 14, 2016, in Nice — are “monster events”. The effect of shock on a planetary scale is no doubt one of the objectives of terrorism across all of its forms. But the global scale of reactions and responses is also a crucial component to understanding the capacity of a society to face this ordeal. The Museum and Memorial of Terrorism will be a universalist authority on terrorism, thanks to the message it will convey beyond France.
Finally, the memorial at the Museum and Memorial of Terrorism will not only feature space for the dead, but also for those who have been wounded or physically/mentally traumatized. Visibility will also be given to acts of rescue and assistance, heroism, and resistance, all of which provide messages of hope. Those who work to prevent acts of terrorism should also be honored by society.
