Henri Alleg
in Léo Matarasso, Seminar of 6 December 2008, Cedetim, Parigi
It is obviously, in the first place, for this reason that he often came to Algiers to defend the daily newspaper of which I was the director -Alger républicain- which, in the face of the publications of the big colonists, was the only one to speak out against the system that served them and against its monstrous defects. Denouncing the inequalities, the injustices, the torture regularly used by the police, the racism, the oppression and the shameless exploitation of the Algerians, the real apartheid (very real even if it was denied) of which those it came to defend were victims, was a difficult and perilous commitment. Alger républicain and those who fought for this newspaper were constantly the target of attacks by the colonial administration. Seizures, fines, prosecutions, heavy sentences up to prison terms, this was the usual lot of the newspaper and those who animated it.
Léo therefore came to plead for the newspaper and its contributors. He also often defended leaders of nationalist parties and anti-colonialist movements, who were also victims of the permanent repression that reigned in this country, whose provisional masters dared to claim without laughter that it was a “French province” and that the laws of the Republic reigned there, just as they did in Paris or Marseille.
His presence in Algiers was therefore not perceived as a simple visit by a lawyer who had come from across the Mediterranean to assist his clients, but as an event with a particular political significance. In the eyes of the Algerians, Léo was not only the prestigious master of the bar whose presence could not go unnoticed, but also a friend of their people in the struggle for freedom, who had come to testify to the solidarity of French anti-colonialists. On the side of the “colonial justice”, prosecutors, examining magistrates or court judges and local lawyers, in their majority supporters of the system, did not hide the little sympathy they had for their Parisian colleague, defender and friend of the “natives” who, in his pleadings, did not hesitate to denounce the colonial regime, which according to their point of view, ended up attacking the mother country itself and thus constituted a real treason.
As the situation hardened and the armed struggle became more intense, Léo’s visits to Algeria became increasingly risky. Those who were called “ultras”, that is to say, the die-hards of colonisation, fanatics of “French Algeria”, of the war and of repression to the worst extremes. They openly implied that, if they had the opportunity, they would not hesitate to “settle their score” with these lawyers, “traitors to France” and “accomplices of the rebels” who had the nerve to come and provoke them in Algiers. And, of course, Léo was among the first to be targeted.
It was in these circumstances that the esteem and friendship that had long bound us together deepened. If I appreciated his political vision, his courage, his generosity and his talent, I was also very sensitive to his conversation, in which the flashes of his culture, his irony and his marvellous humour were always present.
In September 1955, after the banning of the newspaper, at the same time as that of various anti-colonialist organizations including the Algerian Communist Party, he had returned to Algiers to help me preserve what, despite the situation, could still be the rights and heritage of “Alger républicain”. Then, like many of my comrades, I was plunged into the underground, arrested in June 1957, and tortured by the paratroopers of General Massu’s 10th Parachute Division.
I saw Léo again at the end of August or during September of the same year, in the civil prison of Algiers, this former Turkish fort that the French nicknamed “Barberousse” and that the Algerians call “Serkadji”. It was in one of the booths in the visiting room reserved for visits by lawyers to their “clients”, a moment of intense emotion for Léo and for myself that this reunion took place, under the eye of the prison warden, who was watching over us from behind a glass door. During the month that the torturers had been holding me captive, Gilberte, my wife, all my family and Léo himself had feared that, as with many other militants arrested and then murdered, including my comrade Maurice Audin, the parachutists would suddenly announce my “disappearance” or my “escape” one day or another. To find myself there, in prison, clasping the hands of Léo, my dear friend, after weeks of anguish, first in the gaols of El Biar where the torturers operated, then in the concentration camp of Lodi, was, for me and for him, like the consecration of a victory.
From Lodi, thanks to the help of the wives of certain interned comrades, I had been able to reveal the torture suffered in the jails of the paratroopers in a complaint addressed to the public prosecutor, of which Gilberte, my wife, who was in Paris where she was living after her expulsion from Algeria, had received a copy first. This text was also to be sent to the press. Two daily newspapers, L’Humanité and Libération at the time, published it in full the next day, which meant that they were immediately seized. Léo had known for a long time that what I had suffered was in no way exceptional and that, despite the solemn denials of the ministers and military leaders, this was the usual treatment reserved by French “justice” for independence activists. And he was convinced that in order to advance the cause of peace, it was necessary that those millions of French people, intoxicated by the official propaganda which portrayed “pacification” in the colours of an idyllic human action, should know the truth and know the daily horrors practised in their name.
It was this idea that motivated him when he said to me abruptly: “You should write down everything you have experienced. That would be very important. At the time the suggestion seemed absurd. Of course, I understood the value for the outside world of such a testimony which, in fact, would not only be mine but that of thousands and thousands of fighters who, for many, had been assassinated by their torturers as had been Maurice Audin, Ali Boumendjel and so many others. I also knew that among those who had survived – and the majority of whom were, because of the colonial system, totally illiterate – there were few who could have responded to Léo’s suggestion. But what I thought about first was the practical impossibility of carrying it out in the prison conditions. How could I manage to write such a text clandestinely, to hide the pages and then transmit them to the outside when the cell I occupied with two companions was constantly inspected in every corner by the guards and each of us was himself subjected to a meticulous personal search when he went to the lawyers’ visiting room. Léo was not persuaded by these arguments, and clinging to his idea, he bade me farewell, asking me only to think over his proposal.
Back in my cell, I informed my two companions. In spite of the risk of serious sanctions which would also have affected them if I had been discovered, they immediately showed not only their agreement but their enthusiasm for the project. So I set to work.
Four small pages of tiny handwriting. At the beginning and end, I reserved a few lines ostensibly addressed to my lawyer, in reality intended only to mislead the guard’s attention. These papers, folded and refolded, were hidden at the bottom of my socks or underpants while I waited for Léo or another lawyer friend to come. It was only after this “delivery” that I continued writing my text.
The entire text, which reached Paris, was given in secret to Gilberte, my wife. Léo then approached major Parisian publishers, all of whom concluded that it was absolutely necessary to publish the story, but that they themselves would not take responsibility for it, given the likelihood of seizure, legal proceedings and condemnation. Only Jérôme Lindon, director of Editions de Minuit, which was founded during the Resistance, agreed to take the risk. La Question – a title he himself had suggested – was published without further delay in February 1958 and, as Léo had foreseen, the story immediately enjoyed an extraordinary diffusion in France and abroad, participating in the denunciation of the colonial war and the development of the struggle for peace.
There would have been no “Question” without Léo Matarasso, who never claimed the role he had played in getting this book written and finally published.
I am pleased that this meeting has given me the opportunity to remind you of this.
Alleg, Henri