Mythsmasher's Brush With Terrorism In 1995 Paris

In the summer of 1995, I visited Paris for the second time.   As I don't speak or read more than a few phrases in French, I was delighted to discover a cinema specializing in films from Latin America in Spanish with French subtitles (called in French v.o.  for version original "original version) rather than dubbed into French which I would not have understood. 


On my way to the movies, I got off the train and was walking towards the exits, when there was a loud boom and a rush of air.  I threw myself to the floor.  Police officers ran past me towards the train.  


I went up and realized I was in the wrong place.  I didn't write down the metro station and the line to take nor did I remember it correctly.  If I had remembered correctly or written it down, I would have been on the line hit with a bomb that contained nails which resulted in deaths and horrific injuries.   This was not the last bombing by Armed Islamic Action, known in French by its initials GIA.  They were an Algerian jihadist group.


Previous to this bombing, as an act of defiance and solidarity I went to Goldenberg's Jewish restaurant in the Marais section of Paris which had been attacked by gunmen in 1982.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldenberg_restaurant_attack


Had my memory or organization been better, I might not be writing this today.  Or anything else for that matter.