Following last Friday’s attacks in Paris that killed 129 people and left hundreds more injured, Patrick Silberstein said he immediately tried to get in touch with his family and friends in his native France to confirm they were alive.
“When I found out I began contacting everyone to make sure they were safe,” said Silberstein, a resident of Great Neck. “I found out that everyone was.”
Silberstein, who owns the Thomaston Building at 8 Bond St., moved to Great Neck 40 years ago from Cannes, a small town in the south of France that is home to the internationally recognized Cannes Film Festival.
He was born in Lyon in 1945, but later moved to Paris at the age of five, where he lived until he moved to Cannes in the mid-’70s.
Although he moved to Great Neck in 1975 with his wife, Lynda, a number of Silberstein’s family members including two of his brothers, cousins, and “many” of his friends remained in France.
He said they were “emotionally effected” and concerned with what could happen in the future following the attacks.
While his family and friends remained safe, he said he learned through Facebook that the son and nephew of the owner of a restaurant in a small suburb outside of Paris at which he was a regular from his childhood to his young adult life had been killed in the attacks.
“It touches you personally. A tragedy becomes a tragedy when you know someone,” Silberstein said. “I grew up with the uncle and the father so I grew up with them.”
The attackers, who were armed with assault rifles and explosives, targeted six separate locations in France’s capital, Paris prosecutor François Molins said on Saturday.
Militant group ISIS, the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, later claimed responsibility for the attacks.
Given France’s high population of people from countries like Algeria and Morocco, where Islam is the official religion, Silberstein said, the blame for the attacks is wrongfully placed on all Muslim people.
“You cannot blame Muslims as a whole because it would be a terrible thing to do,” he said.
Silberstein also said war and forceful retaliation would not fix the problem.
“You can kill as many Jihadis as you want but this is a problem that will take decades before you can resolve this problem,” he said.
Silberstein added that the Paris attacks were “unfortunately an event that we are going to experience and will experience for a long time to come.”
Little could be done to prevent this type of incident from occurring and people need to come to terms with that truth, he said.
“It is nearly impossible to prevent this type of action. If people were determined to commit this type of crime, there is not much you can do. You have to live your existence with the knowledge that this is in the future,” Silberstein said. “That is my point of view, but I’m sure it is an accurate point of view for people who understand the prevalence.”
He added that he prefers to look at the situation as a human conflict, not one group of people against another.
“I look at human beings as a whole,” he said. “I look at what a human being can do to another human being and it is an atrocious thing, a very tragic thing.”
