On November 13, 2015, the French cartoonist survived Fred Dewilde (a pseudonym) the deadly terrorist attack in the Parisian Bataclan theater, where a metal concert was just taking place. He made some comics about that. Last Sunday, May 5, he committed suicide. He could no longer live with the trauma. He was born in 1966.
Dewilde was very concerned about the fate of the survivors and committed himself to the association Life for Paris, who released the news of his death today. He gave lectures in schools and shared his experiences.
In 2016 he wrote and documented those experiences Mon Bataclan, in which he described in detail the entire attack and its aftermath. Shortly after the attack, he lay stretched out on the ground, bathed in the blood of shot concertgoers. Next to him lay a young woman who had been wounded in the leg. Dewilde encouraged her as their hands were intertwined. They stayed like that for four hours. The killers, whom he depicted as skeletons in his comic strip, passed within six inches of his face. In the months after the attack, he had to rebuild his life and started working again as a draftsman, specializing in medical illustrations, once he was officially recognized as a victim. He continued to have the impression that he was still a prisoner in the Bataclan. Conversations with his friends, who also survived the attack, and his family are discussed in the comic, as are the phobias he developed. He further testified Mon Bataclan about his relationship with the police, courts and his psychiatrist. He chose a pseudonym because he published his comics while the investigation and subsequent lawsuits were still ongoing. He didn’t want to become a victim again.
After the attacks in Nice he published in 2016 La Morsure, in which he emphasized, among other things, the importance of opposing hatred. In that album he dealt with his post-traumatic shock. The comic followed in 2021 Conversation avec Mon Mort, in which he retold what happened to him. Dewilde published the book in 2022 La Mort Émoi, in which texts and illustrations alternate. None of his comics were translated into Dutch. In 2019 he worked with Franck Coste the musical theater piece Panser ma Vie with which he tried to turn a page. Nevertheless, he continued to live with what he called “the monster” afterward.
The attack on the Bataclan was one of six attacks that took place in the evening and night of Friday, November 13, 2015. The attacks left 129 dead and more than 350 injured. Yet another survivor took her own life a few years later. One of the eight terrorists was Salah Abdeslam, who fled and later became involved in the attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016. In 2019, Dewilde already complained in an interview about a lack of psychological help in society. “We will have to face a public health problem in the coming years,” he also said.
Life for Paris notes in their obituary: “We, his family, are shocked and devastated by the violence with which this cunning poison spread by the terrorists of November 13, 2015 mercilessly hit him after more than nine years of resistance. They killed him a second time, without a second chance at ‘survival’.”
Fred Dewilde leaves behind three children.
 passed away | Deaths){kind=link}