To talk about it, they prefer to take a step back. Josh, his big sister Alexie and his classmate, Albine, did not wish to speak in front of the door of their college in Bois d’Aulne, bruised on October 16, 2020 by the assassination of Samuel Paty. They preferred to keep a little distance, because since the event, this familiar place has sometimes become trying. “When we approach the date of the death and assassination of Mr. Paty, obviously, it is no longer a normal college, says Josh, a 3rd year student. It’s not a place where you learn to work calmly, you always have the idea that you had a murder in your head, that you had a teacher who was killed by someone. ”
“No one can expect to experience this in their life, affirms Albine, 3rd year student. What is difficult to achieve is to tell yourself that it was here, where I go every day. To say that the person, we got to know him, is really heavy, difficult. “ Laetitia Belon is Josh and Alexie’s mother. For her, this return had to be as normal as possible. “As a parent, what we tried to do is have our children go to a normal college, with a serene atmosphere, she says. It is an issue, because we want life to go on. We can never erase what happened, our children have lived through terrible times. But they are there to learn, to evolve and to continue to acquire knowledge. “ Alexie, now in first year, had Samuel Paty as her main teacher a few years ago. “He was a teacher who was super nice, but who knew how to keep serious, especially in his class, remembers the schoolgirl. You have to keep the image of the funny, smiling teacher, his personality, rather than saying to yourself: he’s dead. “
