Elsa Cayat

Personal

Elsa Cayat was born on 9 March 1960 in Sfax, Tunisia. Cayat's father, Georges Khayat, was a Tunisian Jew and practicing gastroenterologist, while her mother worked in the legal profession. Her family moved to the Vincennes department in Paris when she was a toddler.

Elsa Cayat was a companion of Paulus Bolten, a shoe designer, and the couple had one daughter, Hortense.

Cayat was 54-years old when she was murdered in Paris, France on 7 January 2015. She was buried in the Jewish section of the Montparnasse Cemetery.

Career

Elsa Cayat was a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, as well as a columnist.

She became qualified as a doctor as a 21-years old, and later practiced psychiatry and psychoanalysis in Paris, France. She published books related to psychology. Her first book was published in 1998, A Man + A Woman = What? In 2007, she published her second book Desire and the Whore: The Hidden Stakes of Male Sexuality. Cayat also helped write chapters in the books "Mastering Life" and "Dangerous Childhood, Childhood in Danger?."

Cayat wrote the biweekly column "Charlie Divan" (Translated: "Charlie on the Couch") in the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Cayat believed that she could help people find meaning in their personal life and emotional difficulties through her column in Charlie Hebdo.

Death

Elsa Cayat had received threats in connection with her religion and work at Charlie Hebdo over the phone about a month prior to the attack. Cayat continued to write her column after the threats dismissing them as "verbal garbage." A patient of Elsa Cayat's said "She feared nothing."

Since the satirical Charlie Hebdo had been printing cartoons about the Prophet Mohammed, it had become a target for Islamic terrorists. On 7 January 2015, brothers Saïd Kouachi, 34, and Chérif Kouachi, 32, opened fire in the Charlie Hebdo offices. The attackers were believed to be a part of an Iraqi jihadist network. The two gunman came into a magazine's editorial meeting killing Elsa Cayat along with several others. The attackers used automatic rifles killing twelve people in the Charlie Hebdo attack. After they killed those who were on their list, they shouted "We have killed Charlie Hebdo! We have avenged the Prophet Mohammed!"

Context

Charlie Hebdo is a satirical magazine. The magazine was under threat because it had created a series of cartoons about the Prophet Mohammed. Also, right before the shooting, the magazine tweeted a cartoon of the ISIS group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Charlie Hebdo was trying to show that ISIS has not won and never will. With its risky cartoons, the office had been threatened many times and firebombed. The French government tried to make Charlie Hebdo hold back on publishing some of its cartoons, but they continued to publish the cartoons because of their ability to have freedom of speech. The shooters who were masked killed only certain cartoonists that they had called out, and later yelled "'We have avenged the phrophet.'".

Impact

Among the twelve who died at the Charlie Hebdo office, Elsa Cayat was the only woman on staff who was shot.

Cayat's family believed she was killed because she was Jewish based on earlier phone threats. A couple weeks before the shooting, Elsa Cayat received many anonymous calls telling her to quit and that she would be killed because she was Jewish. The phone calls stated "You should stop working for Charlie Hebdo otherwise we're going to kill you." Her family said she dismissed the threats as "verbal garbage." Another reason to believe she was killed on the basis of religion was because the shooters had a chance to kill a female employee, but they spared her life saying, "We don't kill women."

Reactions

"Je Suis Charlie" (Translated: "I am Charlie") became the motto for those who believe in a free press and supported the victims killed at the Charlie Hebdo office.

After the attacks, several funds were set up to financially help those who were affected by the attacks on Charlie Hebdo. Fundraisers were also set up to help the victims' families, and the funeral funds of the Jewish cartoonists who were killed. Within 24 hours of the shooting, the French press had raised approximately over $590,000 (half a million euros). The French press raised this money so that the satirical magazine would publish over 1 million copies of an issue instead of its normal run of 60,000 copies.

Writings

Awards

In 2015, she was a recipient of the Legion of Honour award.