L’histoire par les plaques commémoratives

History through commemorative plaques

Duty of memory

In June 2023, without fanfare – neither media nor otherwise -, with complete discretion one could say, three commemorative plaques were placed in Algiers Center, to recall the actions carried out by the FLN, during the War of National Liberation, the Sunday September 30, 1956 and Saturday January 26, 1957.

These were the first bombs set by Taleb Abderrahmane and planted by Zohra Drif and Samia Lakhdari, which exploded on September 30, 1956, one at the Milk Bar (formerly Place Bugeaud, now Place Emir Abdelkader) opposite the headquarters of the 20th Military region of the French army, and the other at the Cafeteria (rue Michelet, current rue Didouche Mourad), opposite the University.
Nearly four months later, on Saturday, January 26, 1957, there were three other time bombs that exploded around 5:30 p.m., almost simultaneously, at the Otomatic brasserie (planted by Zahia Kherfallah and Danielle Minne), 2, rue Michelet; at the Cafeteria (planted by Fadhila Attia), 1 ter, rue Michelet; and at the Le Coq-Hardi brasserie (planted by Djamila Bouazza), 6, rue Charles-Péguy (now rue Abdelkrim El Khettabi), (establishments located some 100 meters from each other, in the university district, one of the busiest in the city, especially at the weekend), commented the French newspaper Le Monde on January 29, 1957, reporting the event. In the edition of May 12/13, 1957, the colonialist press reported the words of Djamila Bouazza after her arrest: “I am aware of the honor of my gesture”, no doubt also summarizing the feeling of the other fidayates.
In the absolutely perilous conditions of the war, the very young fidaiyates, engaged, within the Autonomous Zone of Algiers of the FLN, in the armed struggle for independence, accomplished with heroism, and in a perfect way, the mission which was entrusted to them. They planted the bombs at the time and place assigned to them. Without making any mistakes on the premises, which they were not used to, and without being noticed. They acted in reaction to the unprecedented violence carried out by a large part of the European population (ratoonings and lynching) and by the French police and army (torture and summary executions) against the Muslim population.
It was the FLN’s response through the “bomb strategy” to what had happened on the night of Friday August 10, 1956, rue de Thèbes, in the densely populated Casbah, when ultra supporters of French Algeria , from the European community, mainly racist, placed a bomb at the foot of a house. The explosion surprised the families in their sleep. The toll established by local residents was 70 dead, including children, and many injured. At the end of 1956, the ultras of French Algeria did it again, taking advantage of the funeral of Amédée Froger (mayor of Boufarik, killed on December 29, 1956, as he was leaving his home on rue Michelet) to train the crowd of Europeans to give free rein to their racism by lynching Algerians. Here too, the response would not take long with the three bombs of Saturday January 26, 1957.
To accomplish their mission in the heart of “enemy territory”, the young fidayates had to travel a long way through “a besieged capital, plowed up and down by the noria of patrols on the lookout”. They carried bombs that could have exploded in their bags and torn their bodies to pieces. They acted voluntarily for the national cause and targeted the places designated to them by their FLN leaders. Nothing disturbed them.
This is not the case for the person who placed in June 2023 (it is never too late) one of the commemorative plaques recalling these feats of arms. Indeed, the plaque concerning the bomb at the Cafeteria (1 ter, rue Didouche Mourad), was not placed in the right place. It is on the sidewalk opposite, (2, rue Didouche Mourad) on the wall of what was the Otomatic (today Cercle Taleb Abderrahmane), adjoining the University of Algiers, and which was also targeted by a bomb. What could have disturbed the “installer” of the plaque to the point of leading him to choose the wrong place of memory when the conditions for carrying out this task did not present any obstacles? Or was it through ignorance, or by mistake, or, worse, through carelessness? In June 2024, this plaque is still in the wrong place, a year later.
It is worth pointing out that the Cafeteria was targeted twice: on September 30, 1956 and January 26, 1957. Two commemorative plaques are therefore needed, and not just one, at 1ter rue Didouche Mourad (formerly rue Michelet), where there is currently an agency of the CNMA (National Agricultural Mutual Fund). No commemorative plaque has been placed at this location. Another anomaly: the content of the plaque concerning the Milk Bar bomb which certainly takes a version of the fact from a colonial newspaper of the time by expressly referring to a “first assessment”.

Bouhandes
In 1987, a commemorative plaque was placed where thirty years earlier, in 1957, on a Friday, September 13, the Battle of Bouhandès took place, in Chréa, in the Blida Atlas, between the ALN mujahideen and the French colonial army. The inhabitants who witnessed this battle are mostly deceased but fortunately they passed on the version of events that is reported today by their children. In Bouhandès, where there was already a clinic nearby sheltering about ten wounded, the mujahideen forming the commandos of zones 1 and 2 of wilaya 4 had gathered. They were recovering from the fatigue of the long and arduous marches, interspersed with clashes with the enemy, and were preparing for other battles. Did they intend, as we would later learn, to launch, after having joined up with the commando of zone 3, an attack on the town of Blida, or on Chréa? Or, as we would also later report, were they going to ambush the enemy on the road to Boghari, on the Derrag side? The colonial forces, well informed by their informers, undertook to surround the mujahideen. On the morning of Friday, September 13, the artillery began to pound the ALN positions while the air force dropped napalm bombs on the mujahideen, who were poorly equipped with light weapons. There were, that day, 84 shahids in the ranks of the ALN, about sixty were buried on the spot by the inhabitants, in a mountainous area difficult to access, others had no burial. This event could not be left to the mercy of oblivion. A commemorative plaque was needed to preserve the memory of the ALN fighters who participated in the Battle of Bouhandès and particularly those of them who died under the deluge of fire unleashed by the enemy. It is not surprising that the survivors of this battle and their comrades in arms from Wilaya 4, such as Commanders Youcef Benkhrouf and Mohamed Bousmaha (known as Mohamed El Berrouaghia, who died on May 23, 2024), were keen to join the initiative of the family of one of the chahids of Bouhandès, for the installation of a stele on site. Thus, on September 10, 1987, the duty was accomplished: a few sentences on a marble plaque affixed to an embankment in the basin of Oued El Merdja, pay tribute to the glorious chouhadas who perished in the Battle of Bouhandès. For the locals, it is their Maqam Echahid. On June 21, 2024, return to this place. To get to Oued El Merdja, from El Hamdania, it is, without a pun intended, a real obstacle course. As for Bouhandès, a douar clinging to the mountainside higher up, rather inaccessible. The commemorative plaque was no longer there, destroyed by the fundamentalist terrorists who were rampant in the region from the 1990s.

Deux Moulins and Casino de la Corniche
The year 1957 saw the generalization of the practice of torture and summary executions by the French colonial army in Algeria. For paratrooper officers, expeditious justice was to replace justice “according to the procedure of the Penal Code”. In Saint-Eugène, a suburb of Algiers, the secret torture center was installed at Deux Moulins, near the square, in the cellar of a small building under construction, behind a restaurant, on a dead end leading to the sea The “administration”, supervised by General Massu, was on the other side of the square in a large villa called “Cercle du Baron”.
The restaurant’s cellar had been reorganized by the paratroopers and divided into boxes surrounded by barbed wire, without partitions between them, “as in Indochina.” The suspects were held in these boxes. The cellar looked directly out to sea. The bodies of prisoners who died under torture or were summarily executed were thrown into the sea.
Today, at Deux Moulins, there is no commemorative plaque listing the names of the deceased and paying tribute to them. The testimonies collected here and there do not replace systematic and institutional work of collecting information on the identity and circumstances of the arrest and disappearance of these unburied chouhadas.
Another place of summary executions, not far from the Deux Moulins: the Casino de la Corniche, at Pointe Pescade (Rais Hamidou, today), transformed into a place of torture after the bomb attack that targeted it on June 8, 1957. It is located on a cliff by the sea. The “suspects” were tied to a rope and plunged into the water to force them to “talk”, and when they died, their bodies were thrown into the sea. There is no plaque to recall the crimes committed there by the French army.
M’hamed Rebah