French President Francois Hollande said the attacks in Paris targeted “youth in all its diversity,” killing at least 129. Here are some of their stories:
— Ciprian Calciu, 32, and Lacramioara Pop, 29, were among the millions of Romanians who have migrated West in recent years in search of better-paid jobs. The dream of a better life took them separately to Paris, where they met, became a couple and had a son, Kevin, now 18 months old. They died at the Belle Equipe restaurant where they were celebrating a friend’s birthday, said Calciu’s cousin, Ancuta Iuliana Calciu.
“They weren’t even sure what restaurant to go to. There was another one about 250 metres (yards) away they wanted to go to,” she added.
Calciu repaired elevators and Pop, who had an 11-year-old daughter from a previous relationship, worked in a bar.
“I’m so glad they didn’t take their son that night,” Calciu’s cousin said Tuesday.
Flowers and candles appeared at the gate of Pop’s family home in the small village of Coas in far northwestern Romania, while in Tulcea, an eastern port at the end of the 2,860-kilometre River Danube, there was a memorial service on Monday at the church where Kevin had been baptized.
— Marie Mosser’s love of music brought her to the Bataclan concert hall where she died. The 24-year-old from the French city of Nancy worked for the label Universal Music, according to the “20 minutes” news website.
Mosser’s Twitter profile said she worked in communication and digital marketing. Pascal Negre, president of Universal Music France, tweeted over her death and that of two other victims: “The Universal Music family is in mourning.” Mosser’s father is a manager in Nancy city government, “20 minutes” reported.
FacebookA Facebook profile photo of Marie Mosser.
– Raphael Hilz, a 28-year-old architect originally from the southern German town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, was one of two German victims of the attacks, killed at a restaurant near his office.
Hilz had been working for six months in Paris in the international firm of architect Renzo Piano, his uncle told the Suedtirol News.
The firm told The Associated Press that they were “very sad to confirm that one of our colleagues of German nationality” died in the Friday attacks.
They said two other colleagues, from Mexico and Ireland, were injured but were now doing well.
— Fanny Minot went straight from her job at a TV newsmagazine show to the Bataclan on Friday night. By Sunday, the show’s host, Ali Baddou, would be mourning her death on-air.
Minot, 29, was an editor at the show, “Le Supplement.” Artistic and free-spirited, she enjoyed making independent movies — and above all, enjoyed new experiences, her friend Stephen Fox told The Associated Press. He got to know Minot purely by chance, when she and a friend of hers were travelling in the U.S. about four years ago and came to stay with him and his then-roommate, courtesy of a free-stay website for self-declared couch-surfers.
Despite their different backgrounds, the guys from Shelbyville, Kentucky, and their visitors from France became such fast friends that the travellers stayed two extra days, and then the hosts drove six hours to Memphis, Tennessee, to spend another day with them. And a few months later, Fox went to France to visit Minot over New Year’s Eve.
Related
‘We were bathing in blood’: Paris doctor who rushed to site of suicide blast felt she was treating casualties of war
The enemy is everywhere and nowhere: ISIL enters a new stage in its tactics — war by terror
As Paris cries for its dead, owner of restaurant attacked by gunmen mourns wife who died in his arms
“She was such a loving, compassionate person, with such an adventurous view on life,” said Fox, 27, who credits her energetic outlook with inspiring him to get his post-college life in gear by going to nursing school. “She was a very motivated, hardworking person, and she just loved life.”
Over the years, they stayed in touch, speaking by Skype every few months. But perhaps the memory that most sears his mind is of their goodbye at the airport in Paris.
“We just stood there in silence, realizing it was going to be a long time before we saw each other again, and we said, ’We’re not saying goodbye — we’re saying: Until the next time,”’ he recalled. “Which now kind of hurts, because that’s taken away.”
— Mohamed Amine Ibnolmobarak, 29, was an architect of Moroccan descent who studied and worked in Paris. He was killed at the Le Carillon restaurant in Paris while dining there with his new wife, according to a Facebook posting by his cousin Akram Benmbarek of San Diego. The wife, Maya Nemeta, was shot three times and was in critical condition at the hospital, the cousin wrote.
Ibnolmobarak was born in Rabat, Morocco, and had come to France to complete his university studies. Jean Attali, his professor at Ecole Nationale Superieure d’Architecture de Paris Malaquais, where Ibnolmobarak also taught, wrote on Facebook that his young colleague was a “Muslim intellectual” whose thesis diploma focused on the pilgrimage to Mecca.
“Amine had found his place in our school and in the exercise of his profession of architect,” Attali wrote. “Many of us… hoped for a great future for him.”
The young architect had co-founded a cultural association focused on cities called New South. This month, the group’s work — including that of Mr. Ibnolmobarak — was exhibited at the Galerie du CROUS in Paris. On its Facebook page, New South wrote a tribute to Ibnolmobarak: “His research process, based on intelligence, tolerance and love could not have been a better legacy against terror.”
Hommage à Mohamed Amine Benmbarek, jeune marocain de 28 ans,décédé dans les #AttentatsParis #ParisAttacks #twittoma pic.twitter.com/hWTfhh9vkL
— Belaid El (@Belaid_Now) November 15, 2015
— Kheireddine Sahbi, 29, was an Algerian violinist who had come to Paris to perfect his art at the Paris-Sorbonne university. According to an announcement by the school, Sahbi was enrolled in the Masters of Ethnomusicology program and was involved in the university’s traditional music ensemble.
The school says Sahbi died while returning home in the 10th arrondissement, where terrorists attacked a restaurant.
The young violinist was born on the outskirts of Algiers, the capital of Algeria, and was widely known as Didine. Mr. Sahbi’s friend from Algeria Faycal Oulebsir posted on his Facebook page: “Didine, my friend… You left us too young, dying in Paris so far away from us, taking with you your joy of living and so many hopes.”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1y4_SOggDQ&w=640&h=360]
— On their wedding day in 2013, Anne and Pierre-Yves Guyomard struck the mayor of their Paris suburb, Emmanuel Lamy, as a couple “full of life and hope,” Lamy recalled to the French newspaper Le Parisien.
Two and a half years later, their community, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, would be holding a moment of silence this week for them and others killed in Friday’s attacks in Paris.
Among the crowd at the Bataclan, the Guyomards were particularly steeped in music. Pierre-Yves, 32, taught film scoring at a technical institute, and Anne, 29, had studied music before going to work at a child-care centre, according to Le Parisien.
The two had lived for a time on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion, where Anne Guyomard’s family told news outlet L’Info they had spent an agonizing day and a half wondering about the couple’s fate, calling unanswered phones and appealing for word of the two via Facebook, before being told they had been killed.
Anne was “the daughter I would wish on all parents — one who’s attentive, one who’s full of life,” and she loved children and people in general, brother-in-law Chris Hamer told L’Info. Pierre, meanwhile, was “an encyclopedia of music.”
“Their shared pleasure was music,” Hamer wrote on his Facebook page.
FacebookA photo Anne Guyomard posted online.
— Sebastien Proisy, 38, had launched a promising career in international business consulting that would never be fully realized. He died at a restaurant along Bichat street in Paris during the terrorist attacks when he was shot in the back, according to the Liberation newspaper website.
He was at a business dinner and accompanied someone at the table who wanted to take a smoke outside, according to his great uncle Daniel Senecaut, who was quoted by the La Voix du Nord news website.
Proisy had studied political science and later went to Florida with his Bulgarian wife and son. On their return, they settled in Noisy-Le-Grand on the outskirts of Paris, as the family told it. Proisy also served in staff positions at the European parliament in Bruxelles.
In the past year, he had gone into business in consulting for the Airbus Group. He had also worked as an executive for a company promoting French agribusiness abroad and another business doing market research in Iran and Central Asia, according to his LinkedIn profile. “He was very brilliant,” La Voix du Nord quoted his grand aunt Jeanne Broutin as saying. She and Senecaut described their grandnephew as kind and charming, but also a workaholic.
FacebookA photo of Lola Salines, posted online by Team England Roller Derby.
— Lola Salines of Paris, a young editor at Editions First-Grund, died at the Bataclan concert hall. Her father Georges Salines and brother Clement Salines took to social media after the attacks to launch a desperate search for Lola, who did not respond to their calls. The family later posted on Twitter and Facebook that authorities had confirmed Salines, 28, was one of the victims.
The young woman also was a member of a Parisian roller derby league called ’La Boucherie de Paris.’ Her team name was Josie Ozzbourne, #109, according to the group’s Facebook page.
— Francois-Xavier Prevost, 29, was head of advertising at the French advertising agency LocalMedia and also worked recently for another communications company, Havas Media Group. He died at the attack on the Bataclan theatre, according to Yannick Bollore, the Havas Group CEO who mourned the young worker and several others via Twitter.
Prevost had also spent some time in the United States. The University of North Texas said Prevost had been an exchange student at UNT in the fall of 2007. And the Pittsburgh Riverhounds, a pro soccer team in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, said Prevost interned with the team in the summer of 2009.
— Bertrand Navarret, 37, lived in the southern French community of Capbreton near the Spanish border and was just spending a few days in Paris with friends. They decided to take in a rock concert — where Navarret was killed at Bataclan hall. Starting on a family career path in law, Navarret had given it up for a new life in Canada, where he learned to work with wood. He eventually returned to France with new skills and remade himself as a carpenter and avid snowboarder, according to the Liberation news website.
— Gregory Fosse, 28, of Gambais, France, died at the Bataclan concert hall. He worked for the D17 television station. The company put out a statement saying, “We all knew his kindness, his special smile, and his passion for music,” according to the Liberation newspaper.
Gambais Mayor Regis Bizeau said the community was “deeply shaken,” according to the “toutes les nouvelles” news website.
— Nick Alexander, 36, of Colchester, England, was working at the Bataclan concert hall selling merchandise for the performing band, Eagles of Death Metal. “Nick was not just our brother, son and uncle, he was everyone’s best friend — generous, funny and fiercely loyal,” his family said in a statement. “Nick died doing the job he loved and we take great comfort in knowing how much he was cherished by his friends around the world.”
LinkedIn
— Hannover-born art critic Fabian Stech was among the victims killed at the Bataclan club. The 51-year-old, who had been living in France since 1994, taught in Dijon at a private art school and worked for the German art magazine Kunstforum International, the magazine said in a condolence notice on its website.
He leaves behind a wife and two children, the magazine said.
“That Fabian had to die such a horrible and unnecessary death makes our pain and grief unbearable,” his family in Germany said in a statement published in the Hannoverische Allgemeine newspaper. “Together with his children and his wife, we miss Fabian. He was a great person.”
With files from Cara Anna in New York; Pamela Sampson in Atlanta; Jeff Donn in Plymouth, Mass.; Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey; Colleen Barry in Milan; Maria Verza in Mexico City; Kate Brumback in Atlanta; and Steven R. Hurst in Washington contributed to this report.