Item of the month

The Museum and Memorial of Terrorism has received a donation of Vivien Tilmont’s ticket for the France v Germany match on 13 November 2015 at the Stade de France. Beyond its material value, this object bears the mark of an experience lived through at the very heart of the attacks that struck the capital that evening.

Originally from Normandy, Vivien Tilmont was attending the match as part of an outing organised by his works council. Seated in the stands near Gate J, close to where one of the terrorists blew himself up, he heard an initial explosion shortly after 9 pm. Like many spectators, he did not realise the gravity of the situation and put it down to a minor incident.

At the end of the match, the spectators learnt that serious events were unfolding in Paris. Forced to leave the stadium via a different exit, Vivien Tilmont and his colleagues were caught up in a stampede and overcome by anxiety. As they tried to reach their coach by the most direct route, the police told them that the route was impassable: an explosion had just occurred nearby. It was at that moment that the reality of the attack dawned on them; until then, they had not fully grasped either the nature or the scale of the events.

Back home, Vivien Tilmont kept his ticket and wrote the match score on it in pen, ‘2–0’, as he did after every match. After 13 November 2015, this ordinary gesture became a testament to an evening that had been turned on its head. “It’s still with me; it’s as if it were yesterday,” he says today.

Seeing himself as an indirect witness to the attacks, Vivien Tilmont points out that the experience at the Stade de France is sometimes relegated to the background in the collective memory of 13 November. His piece captures the immediacy of the violence, the bewilderment of the spectators that evening, and the element of chance that prevented an even higher death toll. He also recalls that one man, Manuel Dias, lost his life near the Stade de France.

© Don de Vivien Tilmont / Collections du GIP MMT