“You killed people?” Lucien was about ten years old when he asked this question to his grandfather, a former conscript in the French contingent during the Algerian war. He was intrigued by a gun on display in his office. The answer was as brief as dry. “No, but I saw people die”retorted his ancestor. “I understood from his serious tone that it was better not to dig”, recalls the 20-year-old student. “It was a moment that marked me. I did not dare to question it again for a long time afterwards.”
Like Lucien, thousands of descendants of women and men who lived through the Algerian war face the painful and often silent memory of this history in their families. According to a study cited in the book Youth and the Algerian War by Paul Max Morin, 39% of young French people aged 18 to 25 today have at least one member in their family who was affected by this war, the name of which has long been kept silent.
Grandchildren of conscripts, harkis, pied-noirs, separatists… They inherited this memory less through dates and specific stories than through things left unsaid, anecdotes, dishes or shared times. On the occasion of the sixty years of Algeria’s independence, six of them confided in franceinfo.
More than the memory of the Algerian war, it is that of Algeria itself that is transmitted in families. Ever since she was little, Louisa has heard about it from her father. “He always described ‘Tizi’ to me as from a heavenly place”, remembers this granddaughter of fighters from the National Liberation Front (FLN). Tizi Maghlaz, a village in Kabylie nestled on top of a mountain overlooking the Soummam valley. In his father’s memories, there were fig trees, olive trees and a small river where he went to play. “For him, the village is associated with nature, but also with resistance. A first congress of the FLN was held in the valley”, develops the 26-year-old journalist.
In the family of Meryl, 33, the memory of Algeria is tinged with nostalgia and regret. When her paternal grandmother, a pied-noir of Spanish origin, mentioned her, it was to talk about “At her place”, of the peaceful life she had left against her will. Of these sunny landscapes, of the sea, and of the ice creams that one could eat there.
“My grandmother told of the mutual support that there was in her popular district of Oran. When she worked, she left the children to the neighbors who made them eat.”
Meryl, Blackfoot Granddaughterat franceinfo
After their arrival in France in 1962, in the Var, Meryl remembers that at each wedding, there was always someone who toasted “French Algeria”. “Not because they saw themselves as settlers, they were workers, but because Algeria was their country”she explains.
Without realizing it, Meryl grows up “in a pied-noir culture”. During family meals, food plays a central role: “My grandmother prepared couscous, paella, Andalusian gazpacho. For Christmas, there were mantecaos, small shortbread cakes”.
At Anahi, 25, granddaughter of Algerians born in the 1920s near Sétif, the “few things” what remains to him of the country of his grandparents also passes through the plate. During the reunion with his uncles and aunts, “we talk very little about Algeria, but we cook together”. The women share recipes, teach the youngest cooking techniques: “We cook couscous, chorba – a pasta-based soup -, makrouts… It’s a moment of transmission“.
“I don’t speak Arabic. With my family in Algeria, we communicate through the kitchen.”
Anahi, granddaughter of Algeriansat franceinfo
Algeria also survives through music. Meryl grew up hearing The Beggar of Love and The girls of my country of Enrico Macias during family celebrations. “It’s a little cliché, I know, but I’ve kept a party culture from it”, she laughs.
The story with a capital “H” arises when no one expects it. Soraya was in 6th grade when the Algerian war burst into her life. “Someone spat on me at school and called me ‘damn shit harki'”, says this granddaughter of auxiliaries engaged in the French army. It’s the first time she hears the word “harky” used as an insult. In his family, no one has ever explained the meaning to him. Soraya just knows that her grandparents were repatriated to France in 1962 and placed in miserable conditions in the camps of Rivesaltes (Pyrénées-Orientales) then Logis d’Anne (Bouches-du-Rhône). That they lived in unsanitary barracks and that you had to walk for miles to take the children to school.
“When people spoke of harkis, I perceived the word ‘traitor’, whereas for me, it was synonymous with ‘expatriate’.”
Soraya, granddaughter of harkisat franceinfo
Lucien remembers the silences of his grandfather, a French officer in the 65th Engineer Battalion in North Constantine. But also of these episodes its deployment in Algeria, evoked with gravity with the turning of scenes of the daily newspaper. Like this time when, little, Lucien “played at war” with a pistol. “My grandfather told me about the ambushes, the horrible things he had seen on the front lines. I understood that real war was not a game”, says the student.
“He told me about what they called ‘wood chores’ in the army: they took Algerian prisoners and killed them. He saw abuses, which he still has a lot of trouble talking about.”
Lucien, grandson of a French conscriptat franceinfo
In Louisa’s maternal family, war was never taboo. The year he turned 13, his mother took him with his brothers to the National Museum of the Moudjahid (the term which designates the fighters for independence in Algeria) in Algiers. “It was the first time she spoke to us about the FLN, she was very invested. She was proud to tell that her father had fought for independence”remembers the young woman.
“There is a very strong and glorious storytelling in my family around the figure of the mujahid.”
Louisa, granddaughter of an FLN fighterat franceinfo
Louisa learns that her father smuggled guns in sacks of barley to help the resistance when he was little. She understands that the scar on her grandfather’s knee is the mark of torture. By the OAS? The French army ? She never knew. “For the first time, I had concrete images of the consequences of the war in my family”continues Louisa.
Violence and forced exile leave indelible marks on those who have lived through them. They recognize themselves in the attitudes, the relationship to life. Meryl’s maternal grandparents experienced their hasty departure from Algeria as a trauma. “My grandmother equated this departure with a ‘deportation’. In France, she had all her life of the vagueness in the soul, a depressive state which has never left her”, remembers the Varoise. In his apartment in Toulon, “Granny Marinette” had hung a painting of his district of Oran, the only evocation of his life before.
Despite years in France, Soraya’s family never felt at home there. “There was the brutal separation with those who remained in Algeria, but also the language barrier when arriving”, she describes. And the integration sometimes done without subtlety. When they arrived in France, his uncles and aunts had to change their first names. Mohamed has become Jacques. Aziz was called Raoul. Farida, Marie-France.
“In France, my grandparents always feared that they would take what they had. They didn’t want to go back to Algeria either, where they were frowned upon, and were afraid that they would be killed.”
Soraya, granddaughter of harkisat franceinfo
Others have kept a stubborn resentment from their forced departure. Meryl’s maternal grandfather, an Italian pied-noir and senior civil servant, lived with his wife, the daughter of a French soldier, in a house in Algiers with servants. “My grandmother always felt betrayed, driven out of her home after helping the Algerians”, she describes. Once in France, his grandfather often made racist remarks towards “the Arabs” and claimed to vote for the National Front. A discourse trivialized by war and colonial racism. “My parents were trying to make me understand why they were saying that. But with my grandparents, they preferred to divert the conversation”she slips.
Today, the last generation of descendants of Algeria reclaims this memory with one certainty: the war in Algeria is not a question that would belong to the past. Anahi read a few passages from the Stora report on the memories of colonization and the war in Algeria. She believes that recognition is necessary, but not enough. That we must also face the persistent effects of this past on the descendants of this history: immigration, racism, anti-Semitism.
Anahi says she often had to prove her identity. “Throughout my college and high school, I was sent back to Algeria. I was questioned about my first name, my frizzy hair. This created a feeling of illegitimacy in me”, she illustrates.
“I campaigned, read texts on memory … It helped me find my place, but there is always a lot of anger. We are never appeased with this story.”
Anahi, granddaughter of Algeriansat franceinfo
Soraya, she has chosen to invest with associations of harkis. In the Vaucluse, she helped to set up structures and to organize meetings with other descendants, in particular of pied-noirs or conscripts. She visited all the harkis camps in France and took part in exhibitions.
“I carried this story like a weight. I had to find my identity. Today, I am proud to be a descendant of harkis.”
Soraya, granddaughter of harkisat franceinfo
For two years, Justine, granddaughter of Pieds-noirs, wrote the Algerian Sauce podcast with two co-authors. This work allowed her to meet other descendants who, like her, sought to understand the experience of their grandparents. “It’s an intimate format, which made it possible to put all the witnesses on the same footing of equality”explains the producer.
She is particularly interested in the story of her grandmother, whose sister was assassinated by the FLN in 1957. “I found letters written by this sister, a few weeks before her assassination, which we read together.” At that time, “my grandmother was still in Algeria in her words, she was in that earlier time. It allowed me to get closer to her, at a time when her memory was fading.”
Lucien chose the brass band to transmit this memory around him. He plays the drum during memorial ceremonies and tries to raise awareness among those around him.
“The emotions passed on by my grandfather allowed me to go beyond school knowledge of the war, to take an interest in memory. It’s a chance.”
Lucien, grandson of a French conscriptat franceinfo
For her part, Louisa feels that her story has made her very sensitive to inequalities and oppression. She chose journalism to give voice to those who suffer them. “For me, what is important is to write the story that my grandparents had so much trouble telling me, to pass it on to my children”, pursues the granddaughter of Algerian separatists. “May the Algerian identity remain forever in my family, through language, culture, memory”.