Memory
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The Head of State commemorated this Saturday the 60th anniversary of the Evian agreements and the ceasefire in Algeria during a ceremony at the Elysée. The culmination of an “imperfect” but “assumed” memorial five-year term.
The tone is sober, the voice serious. “All of you here, returnees, harkis, soldiers, conscripts, independence activists, families of the disappeared, Jews from Algeria, your stories are all incomparable, all singular, all irreduciblesaid Emmanuel Macron under the gilding of the village hall of the Elysée. Your personal trials were all trials of the nation. They changed the face of France. Sixty years to the day after the ceasefire in Algeria, the Head of State wanted to address this Saturday to all the memories of the conflict.
In front of an audience of representatives of associations, elected officials, college and high school students invited for the occasion to the Elysée, the President chose to commemorate the date of March 19, 1962, “first that of a relief”. Officially putting an end to the fighting, it did not however mark the “end of violence”born “was neither the beginning of peace nor the end of war”, but rather a “milestone”said Emmanuel Macron, adding that this date “can neither be the only one nor be denied, forgotten”. A hollow response to…