Les Harkis. Drame ou tragédie ? 1955-2025 : un premier bilan

Hafida Chabi and Wolf Albes present Les Harkis. Drame ou tragedie ?

Maurice Allais: "Serions-nous des criminels ?"

Could the abandonment, the exodus, and the massacre of the Harkis have been avoided as in a drama, where the ending is always uncertain? Or were they inevitable due to the colonial situation, as in an ancient tragedy, where, from the very beginning, fate is inescapable: alea jacta est?

"Serions-nous des criminels ?" The metropolitan press in 1962

This first part, with the analysis of the periodicals "Liberation", "L'Express", "France Observateur" and "Les Temps modernes" on one side, as well as "Le Monde", "Le Figaro", "Paris Match", "L'Aurore" and "Combat", but also "La Nation francaise" and "L'Esprit public" on the other, is full of surprises.

How did the metropolitan press inform its readers about the Harkis? Did it commit to them? Or did it pass over in silence everything that concerned them – knowing that the journalists were perfectly aware of what was happening? Were they therefore also responsible for their misfortune, a case of failure to assist a person in danger?

Or, to quote Maurice Allais, 1988 Nobel Prize winner and ardent defender of the Harkis in "Combat": "Serions-nous des criminels ?"

About one hundred reading notes

In the second part, the reader will find about one hundred reading notes on stories, novels, testimonies, analyses, as well as comics, films, and plays that constitute a preliminary assessment in this field which – of course – cannot be exhaustive.

The "quiet fight" continues

In the last part, through several interviews, Hafida Chabi and Wolf Albes, while completing the testimony of "Un combat tranquille" (2022), try to open new horizons to better understand and transmit the history of the Harkis as it is reflected in the reading notes.