60 years ago, on March 18, 1962, the Evian Accords were signed, which led to the implementation of a ceasefire the next day between the French army and Algerian separatists. There are “in the younger generation, the desire not to be a prisoner of this memory” of the Algerian war, explained on Friday March 18 on franceinfo Benjamin Stora, historian specializing in Algeria and the Maghreb, author of a report on the memories of colonization and the Algerian war given to Emmanuel Macron in January 2021.
franceinfo: In the Algiers calendar, this March 18 is a kind of non-event. First of all, is it a date that refers to France?
Benjamin Stora : It is a date which is quite simply that of a ceasefire. So it’s not the end of the Algerian war, no historian, no one for that matter, considers it to be the definitive end. It was a ceasefire especially for the conscripts of the contingent. 400,000 soldiers were present on Algerian territory at that time. For most French families, who all had a father, an uncle, a brother in Algeria, it is therefore a great relief, basically. That’s it, the date of March 18 and 19.
Sixty years later, there is still a difficulty in talking about this period in the families, among the soldiers, of these things that are still buried. Is it significant?
This is quite significant because the young soldiers of twenty who had left for Algeria at the end of the 1950s were returning to a society which was in full consumption. It was the Trente Glorieuses, a society that wanted to completely forget the wars. France had been at war practically since 1939. And then there had been Indochina in 1946, Algeria in 1954. There was a thirst and a desire in French society to consume, to travel and therefore to forget these wars, these exactions, these massacres. These conscripts, when they returned, few people wanted to listen to them talk about their war.
Are there millions of families who have lived with this silence and this discrepancy for decades?
All families have been affected by the war in Algeria. In total, 1.5 million young people, between 1955, 1956 and 1962, left for Algeria for military service which ranged between 18 and 30 months. It is considerable. It was the moment of transition to adult life for most of these young people who were going to get married, who had fiancées. It was a very important period in a man’s life.
How has this leaden screed, this silence around Algeria, whether in the political spheres, but also the most intimate, weighed on recent history?
It weighs because when a story is not assumed, it is transmitted badly. From there, there is the proliferation of completely fantasized narratives that distort reality. The more time passes, the less the stories that approach the truth are transmitted. And this gives rise to effervescences of memory, of identity.
In the report that you submitted to Emmanuel Macron, there is the idea that it is never too late to say things.
We must, 60 years later, begin to confront this colonial reality. It must be faced with the risk of gangrene and oblivion, that is to say the fact that the stories not transmitted or distorted provoke resentments and dangerous memories.
This is something that weighs on part of French youth, those whose families did not talk about Algeria, those whose parents or grandparents are Algerians. And today, this youth has grown up with this silence and these things left unsaid.
The silence is of course from the point of view of those who knew Algeria, who fought this war, but also from the point of view of the younger generations who no longer want to live with this silence, who no longer want to live with these no -said and who want to get as close as possible to the truth, to history. These are all the families of Algerian origin, but also those who have been called the harkis, the black feet. In the younger generation, there is a desire for history, a desire to approach this history, but at the same time a desire not to be a prisoner of this memory. Because we must also face the challenges of the future, not be constantly ruminating on history. You have to take it to overcome it.
Emmanuel Macron has multiplied since the beginning of his mandate the gestures of appeasement. Was he heard in Algiers? Is there a dialogue today, an exchange or is it a dialogue of the deaf?
It’s a difficult dialogue, the relationship to the world is not the same. Of course, these are different reports. So, there are indeed distortions, there are indeed silences, misunderstandings, memorial oppositions that exist between France and Algeria. It is therefore a work which, in fact, fundamentally, has only just begun. Until now, we were mainly in ideological disputes about repentance and apologies, etc. But here, through my report, what we are working on is precisely concrete points, that is to say nuclear tests, archives, maintenance of cemeteries, of the disappeared, etc.
This story has crossed your life, too, Benjamin Stora. What are your hopes for the period that opens today?
The hope is that there will indeed be points of view, not that fabricate a common narrative – I think that is not possible – but at least that there will be bridges that establish that we are approaching a common truth together, even if, of course, it will still take a long time. It’s still difficult. We cannot make up for sixty years of delay simply by a single speech or a single gesture. We will have to continue this policy step by step, this policy of small steps. This is the one I tried to implement.