In a presidential campaign turned upside down by the war in Ukraine, the Head of State is preparing to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Evian Accords, signed on March 18, 1962. In Algeria as in mainland France, 1962 marks the end of the war , the beginning of hopes for independence and freedom, but also carries violence and exile. While the French authorities were negotiating with the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN), the Secret Army Organization (OAS) violently opposed any independence. On March 15, one of his commandos assassinated six inspectors of social educational centers (CSE), gathered at a place called Château Royal, in the district of El Biar, near Algiers. They are Mouloud Feraoun, a writer and friend of Albert Camus, Professor Max Marchand, Marcel Basset, Robert Eymard, Ali Hammoutène and Salah Ould Aoudia. “The stupidity that coldly kills”will write in the World, on March 19, Germaine Tillion, who founded the social centers in Algeria.
Since 2017, several “symbolic gestures” aimed at reconciling the memories of the Algerian war were carried out by Emmanuel Macron. This Tuesday, March 15, the French ambassador to Algeria, François Gouyette, laid a wreath on the stele erected in Algiers in honor of Mouloud Feraoun and the five other victims, on behalf of the President of the Republic. Jean-Philippe Ould Aoudia, son of one of the six social center inspectors killed by the OAS, however regrets that the victims of the terrorist organization were not honored during wider official commemorations.
On March 15, 1962, six men, Algerians and French, all CSE inspectors, were assassinated by an OAS commando in El Biar, in the suburbs of Algiers. Why were they targeted?
The assassination of March 15, 1962 goes back a long way. First with the creation of the Social Centers Service by Germaine Tillion [en octobre 1955, ndlr]. A month before, Jacques Soustelle [alors gouverneur général de l’Algérie] had published an order creating the specialized administrative sections (SAS). These are military structures aiming to provide care, notions of education but also to control the population. Two structures are therefore created at the same time, but the military will be less successful than that relating to National Education. In the biased mind of the military, defeated in the Battle of Diên Biên Phu six months earlier, controlling the population was important. However, the latter quickly preferred social centers to SAS. General Massu, who had full powers during the Battle of Algiers, thus attacked the social centers. He saw in it a deviance of the Catholics and Christians present in these centers in favor of the independence of the Algerians.
During the trial of the barricades [une semaine insurrectionnelle des partisans de l’Algérie française], the social centers were taken to task by the colonels who disobeyed. All soldiers and civilians involved in the barricades affair will be part of the OAS. They heard in a court, soldiers, officers, including Massu, insulting the social centers. For them, it was a blank check, a clearance. The March 15 crime did not emerge ex nihilo. Finally, within these centers, there was an almost equal recruitment between Algerians and French. It was the prefiguration of independent Algeria. For the extremist supporters of French Algeria, there was no question of it.
Among the victims was your father, Salah Ould Aoudia…
As a teacher, my father had been personally recruited by Germaine Tillion. He was one of the oldest leaders of the social centers service. With him, we wanted to decapitate an entire service.
That day, three days before the signing of the Evian agreements which opened the way to independence, the partisans of French Algeria committed a murderous attack. The excitement in public opinion is considerable. What were the political repercussions?
In his memoirs, Robert Buron, one of the French negotiators of the Evian Accords, writes that this crime impressed them. He thought that the Algerians would not continue the negotiations. They were afraid that the agreements could not be carried out. Things were too advanced to be disrupted, however. The stupidest crimes do not necessarily interfere with the path to peace and reconciliation between peoples. In public opinion, the excitement was also important. On the morning of March 19, in all schools in France, a minute of silence was observed in tribute to these teachers. For us, descendants of the victims of the OAS, the minute of silence in tribute to Professor Samuel Paty had a very strong resonance.
January 26, in front of associations of repatriates from Algeria invited to the ElyséeEmmanuel Macron paid tribute to the victims of the rue d’Isly, dozens of pied-noirs killed on March 26, 1962. A demonstration “stirred up by the OAS”, he added. Are these words important to you?
They don’t matter. Historians Gilles Manceron, Alain Ruscio and Fabrice Riceputi have written about March 26, 1962. They have shown that it was a demonstration staged and organized from start to finish by the OAS, following the directives of General Salan. She was therefore not “ignited”. This word means nothing. President Macron has opened the site of wounded memories of the Algerian war. This is a good thing. He paid tribute to the harkis, to the repatriated, to the Algerian victims of October 17, 1961. But he never paid tribute to the 2,700 victims of the OAS. It is the only wounded memory of the Algerian war that he refused to honor.
What do you think of the wreath laid this Tuesday by the French ambassador to Algeria, on the stele paying homage to Mouloud Feraoun and his companions?
I cannot be insensitive to what has been done for these six victims. The sacrifice of my father and his dead companions for the defense of the values of the Republic and for the independence of Algeria will not have been in vain. But Emmanuel Macron preferred to pay tribute to the victims in Algeria…
Are you expecting another special gesture from the President of the Republic with regard to the victims of the OAS?
I no longer expect anything. And there will be nothing. If there should have been something, it would have been done already.
Why was this not done in your opinion?
By electoralism. In the South, the population of the repatriated Pieds-noirs approves of the crimes of the OAS. The proof: one of the members of the OAS commando who killed my father, Gabriel Anglade, was twice elected municipal councilor of Cagnes-sur-Mer in charge of returnees. I went down to Cagnes, I participated in the presence of meetings to denounce the presence of an OAS killer within the municipality. Everyone cares…
The “symbolic gestures” carried out by Emmanuel Macron since 2017 aiming to “appease” Do the memories of the Algerian war go in the right direction, in your opinion?
I can only be in favor of the appeasement of wounded memories on the sole condition that it is all wounded memories. But from the moment we make a selection of these memories, we continue to divide them. Harkis, Charonne, March 26, 1962, Europeans, October 17, 1961… Emmanuel Macron has made the rounds of memories. One remains. Why does he not honor that of civilians, soldiers, Algerians, French, magistrates, elected officials, teachers, police officers killed by the OAS? The last ramparts of the Republic are the last thanked.