The year 2022 marks sixty years since the end of the Algerian war. Among the tributes this year, that paid to a major actor of this period. Jean Amrouche, a man of the shadows, but also of letters and radio, died of cancer at the age of 56 on April 16, 1962 in Paris, a few days after the ceasefire but a few weeks before Algerian independence , proclaimed in July.
A supporter of independent Algeria, Jean Amrouche was an important intermediary between the Algerian National Liberation Front and General de Gaulle during the war. His son, Pierre Amrouche, writer and African art specialistjoined by Victor Mauriat of the Africa editorial staff, reminds us who his father was.
” In fact he was a bit like de Gaulle’s secret emissary to the FLN in Tunis. That is to say that he had met de Gaulle in 1944 in Algiers, where he was already on the radio of Free France and he had already explained to him at the time that Algeria would not remain French, which was quite blasphemous at that time.
And from 1944 to 1962 he remained close to De Gaulle, they communicated and de Gaulle had unofficially instructed him to make contact with the leaders of the FLN in Tunis in particular Ferhat Abbas who was a friend of my father and Krim Belkacem too, to try to weave links, to find points of agreement to put an end to the fighting.
And de Gaulle had just, a few days before his death, sent him a letter saying to him “be happy, what you have worked and suffered so much for has just materialized with the signing of the Evian Accords”. »
► Read also : The War of Independence in Algerian Literature: From Enthusiasm to Disenchantment
► Also to listen : Jean Amrouche, this stranger (1906-1962)