Paul Henissart

The story of the last years of French colonial rule in Algeria. In the epilogue, Henissart says, "What they ( French Algerians ) really wanted was some sort of guarantee that they could remain on viable terms in their birthplace, whether it endured under French sovereignty was secondary. The strongest ties were to a specific piece of real estate, not to the tricolor."
He suggests that the settlers' best chance would have been to support a new Algerian state, but in reality they overwhelmingly hoped for an apartheid regime backed by a French military coup. When this didn't happen, the OAS chose outright terror against the Muslim population and at independence most of the 1.000.000 Europeans (out of a population of 9.000.000) fled the country.
I needed patience but Paul Henissart effectively shows the disconnection from reality of the "pieds noirs". He wrote this memorable book only 10 years after the events and it's based on first hand interviews with the main actors.… (mehr)

1909 Wolves in the City: The Death of French Algeria, by Paul Henissart (read 18 Feb 1985) This is a French journalist's account of the years 1961 and 1962--the death years for French Algeria. It was an awful time, just unbelievable that the pieds noirs and their fanatic OAS could do what they did. This book was unfailingly interesting, and was written in 1970--so there is some perspective. The last paragraph: "But even now, on wet evenings, over a glass of Ricard, around the hushed plazas of Alicante, nostalgia for the white coastal cities, the immense bluish mountain ranges, the spectacularly dawns, the freedom of Africa suddenly pierces one of the peids noirs who fought for the OAS. He is young and dirt poor, wears a torn shirt and filthy pants, and has fashioned a new life for himself where he disembarked in confusion and bitterness in 1962. Yet something of the rough past lingers, his views have not changed all that much. Clapping his hand to his heart with no trace of self-consciousness, before returning to his game of cards with his Spanish partners, he proclaims: 'La France est ma terra.'"… (mehr)