in the archives of letters sent to the editorial staff after the attack of January 7, 2015

The letter is just signed with a first name: Dominique. The reader will not have any more information about this woman who plunges back into her memories, one beautiful day in the 1970s. This Wednesday, like every other Wednesday, Dominique goes to the newsstand to buy her Charlie Hebdo. Problem: there is only one copy left and a man wants it too. So they buy it together, share a coffee and read.

Three years later, their daughter Charly was born, then their son, whom they wanted to call Hebdo – it would ultimately be Hugo. January 7, 2015, the date of the terrorist attack against Charlie HebdoDominique's husband would have been 60 years old, if cancer had not taken him away in 2012. As companions in heaven, “you offer him a suit full of his idols”quips Dominique in this letter sent to the editorial staff of the satirical newspaper, shortly after the attack. And then the tone becomes heavier. “Please continue, for those who left, for Charly and Hugo, for my grandchildren, that they always believe in freedom and also a little bit for me”, she concludes.

Letters like this, the writing of Charlie Hebdo received tens of thousands after January 7, 2015. Between 56,000 and 70,000 according to estimates by the newspaper's teams. Ten years later, a large part of this “Charlie fund”, collected until February 2018, is stored in 146 gray boxes lined up on the shelves of a cold room at the Paris Archives, better able to preserve this documentary collection than the premises of the weekly.

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