Researching an uncle from Algeria
18
JULY
2012
How to reconstruct the puzzle of a life? How to revive a death, a great-uncle who left without any letters, diary, writing or even children that can perpetuate his memory?
Fernand Doukhan was born in 1913 in Algiers, in a Berber Jewish family who lived in poverty. In the family line, he is the first man who was born French, the first to have a French name, the first to go to French school, the first to go and defend the French flag, the first to become an officer of the French Republic. When the war broke out, on November 1st, 1954, he is a young teacher at the Lazerges school , close to Bab-el-Oued, and quickly chosoes his camp. the oneof the independence of the Algeria. Fernand Doukhan was arrested in January 1957, and interned in a camp, in Lodi, near Medea, for more than a year, then deported to the France. He died in 1996, hit by a BMW, in Montpellier.
I had to dive into documents of Consistory of Paris and Alliance Israélite Universelle in Paris, in the Centre of the archives of overseas (CAOM), based in Aix-en-Provence, and into the Historical Service of the Defence (SHD) of Vincennes. I also had find witnesses, cousins, nephews, friends, former students, former classmates of normal school of Bouzaréa, former comrades, independence activists, former prisoners locked up like him in Lodi. I finally had to return to his footsteps in Algiers, in the building where he was born, in Bab-el-Oued, in the apartment where he grew up, a few streets later in the corridors of Bouzaréa where he studied in the Lazerge school, near the Nelson district, where he taught, in Lodi, where he had been interned.
This two-year work gave birth to a book, "My uncle of Algeria", published by the Editions Stock in November 2010.
Speaker | Location |
---|---|
Nathalie FUNES |
Seine B |