Dozens of firefighters who spent the summer fighting wildfires stood in formation on Paris’s Place des États-Unis on Friday, singing “La Marseillaise” in tribute to the nearly 3,000 people who lost their lives in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the United States.
Moments earlier, wreaths had been placed at the foot of the “tree of liberty,” planted on the square 25 years ago in memory of the victims.
Pupils from the Concordia school also recited two poems: one by 18th-century French poet André Chénier and “All Those Souls, A to Z,” by American poet Del “Abe” Jones.
The annual ceremony in Paris’s 16th arrondissement was led by Mayor Jérémy Redler and attended by Mario Mesquita, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy, and Éléonore Caroit, France’s minister delegate for the Francophonie and international partnerships….