By refusing to "flagellate in front of Algeria" and by denouncing the choice of March 19 to commemorate the end of the war, the candidate RN Marine Le Pen chose Friday to address a wink to the French repatriated from Algeria , but also to the history of his party co-founded by supporters of the OAS, a clandestine organization opposed to Algerian independence.

"This date (...) was not the end of the Algerian war, because there were tens of thousands of harkis who were brutally murdered" thereafter, castigated Ms. Le Pen.

Mayors of RN municipalities have already chosen to rename their streets "March 19, 1962".

Visiting the Gard, candidate LR Valérie Pécresse has undertaken to find, if elected, "another date" than March 19.

Associations of repatriates contest the reference to the Evian agreements - signed on March 18, 1962 and which led to the implementation of the ceasefire the next day - to commemorate the end of the Algerian war (1954-1962) because of the violence that continued until the independence of Algeria on July 5, 1962.

General Charles de Gaulle, President of the Republic, announces the ceasefire which was concluded in Evian during negotiations for the settlement of the Algerian war, during a televised speech, March 19, 1962 in Paris AFP/Archives

In Perpignan, where, as elsewhere in the South, a large Pied-noir community and their descendants have settled, Mayor RN Louis Aliot will inaugurate an exhibition on Saturday paying tribute to the Pied-noir and Harki victims.

Heritage

800,000 Europeans left Algeria after the Evian agreements.

Some argue that they and their descendants today represent between two and three million French people.

A number impossible to verify.

"In a city like mine, it matters," says Mr. Aliot.

Europeans from Algeria land in Marseille, May 25, 1962 – AFP/Archives

However, the elected official agrees: the Pieds-noirs vote "counts less than it counted".

"The generations who have experienced this tragedy are fewer and fewer. It's a story that will die out," he laments.

“The generation that is now disappearing has been extremely marked by decolonization.

Some who had experienced the shock of repatriation were also more intolerant of immigration," observes researcher Emmanuelle Comtat, author of a thesis on the Pieds-noirs and politics.

“Politicians like to believe that there is a community vote” but the Pieds-noir vote “never existed”, “it was very diverse” politically, adds the researcher.

An even truer observation for their descendants.

It is "a memory of the loss that has been transmitted", judges Ms. Comtat.

Not a political legacy.

For Ms. Comtat, "Marine Le Pen is less interested today in those who have been marked by the end of the empire than in the losers of globalization.

Eric Zemmour, Reconquest candidate!

in the presidential election, March 9, 2022 in Paris EMMANUEL DUNAND AFP / Archives

As for Eric Zemmour, he exploits this past to show that cohabitation between different groups is not possible".

President of the Algerianist circle, an association which defends "the culture and memory of the French in Algeria", Suzy Simon-Nicaise believes that "the elected officials on the right and in the center are nevertheless attentive to the memory of the French in Algeria".

Via her association, the one who was deputy to the former LR mayor of Perpignan, Jean-Marc Pujol, sent a questionnaire to the presidential candidates.

Valérie Pécresse, LR presidential candidate, on March 18, 2022 in Toulouse Lionel BONAVENTURE AFP

The four right-wing or far-right candidates answered him: Valérie Pécresse, Marine Le Pen, Eric Zemmour and Nicolas Dupont-Aignan.

She castigates, on the other hand, Emmanuel Macron, whose remarks on colonization she has still not digested "crime against humanity" during the 2017 campaign, and denounces the "at the same time" of the president who will preside over a ceremony on Saturday at the Elysée for the 60th anniversary of the Evian Accords.

"My parents stopped voting in 1962", recalls the deputy (UDI) of New Caledonia Philippe Gomès, whose family fled Algeria.

President Emmanuel Macron, March 18, 2022 in Pau Ludovic MARIN AFP

But this one is grateful to Mr. Macron who had pushed a text for the recognition and repair of harkis, to try the "at the same time" for the "recognition of intertwined but not always shared memories".

© 2022 AFP