In a provincial town in colonial Algeria, Jews and Muslims coexist in an increasingly tense climate. It was then that a provocative near the extreme right launched bloody riots.
I have always heard in my childhood Constantinoise, pronounce with dread the date of “ August 5 ». This date of 1934 was that of the massacre of twenty-seven Jews in Constantine. She was the traumatic-souvenir date in all the whispered conversations in my family at the height of the attacks during the Algerian War. My mother, born in 1918, was therefore 12 years old when she saw her eyes the horror of an anti -Jewish outburst, and all the fear that followed.
So, during the “ events “From Algeria, the” August 5 »Was he going to come back ? Could we stay here or should we leave ? THE “ Muslims »They were going to attack us again, in our neighborhood ? The trace did not fade. However, this massacre was not really told in the many stories of anti-Semitism concerning France in the interwar period. Colonial Algeria, it was however in France …
Cultural changes
Joshua Cole’s book, a great historical investigation into this tragic event, begins by evoking the meaning of these words, “ Muslims “,” Jews “,” Europeans », All these people living in separate communities, but together, in a colonial city in French province: Constantine.
The book opens with the exposure of a double function, that of sketching the existence of a legal anteriority which manufactures a very particular category, the “ subject “, Applied to” natives Muslims. It also summarizes what the upcoming program will be: an intercommunary confrontation.
Guided by his historian motivation, Joshua Cole gradually reveals another painting, that of cultural, social, political metamorphoses leading to the separation and juxtaposition of the two communities. On urban separations, their modifications and their fluidity, he cites the memories of the Muslim intellectual Constantine, Malek Benabi:
In the streets of Constantine where we only saw the turbans, the burnous and the embroidered flannel, all that was starting to disappear. And the shops where these items closed one after the other were made. We could see more and more European clothing or the thrift store of Marseille. The urban landscape was transformed by this side and another. The increasingly dense establishment of Europeans and the massive francization of the Jews gave, with this new settlement, its cafes, its own trade in new arteries, such as rue Caraman, its banks, its restaurants, its electricity, its clothes, a new aspect of the city. The life “ native Retacted, took refuge in the alleys and dead ends of Sidi Rached.
Jews and Muslims from Algeria
The Jews of Algeria become French citizens by the Crémieux decree of 1870. Immediately disputed by the army and the Europeans of “ strain Who claimed to repeal it, this decree is the target of extremely virulent anti -Semitism which experiences a strong push at the time of the Dreyfus affair.
In Oran, in 1895, following a campaign launched by a Belgian who became French, Paul Bidaine, an anti -Semitic party seized, between 1896 and 1905, of the municipal council, submitting the Jews to vexatious measures and making a climate of hatred conducting, in May 1897, to days of riots accompanied by violence and ransacking. In Algiers, in 1898, when the chief of the anti -Semites was an Italian immigrant, Maximiliano Milano says “ Max Régis “, Mayor of Algiers and president of the anti -Jewish league, Édouard Drumont is elected deputy, while in Constantine, the mayor, Émile Morinaud, dismissed Jewish municipal employees.
On the eve of the First World War, in 1914, the Jews of Constantine have been French for forty years. Have they become “ Europeans »Detached from their native origin, therefore in radical opposition with the Muslim community ? Joshua Cole advances with precision and subtlety in his work, showing a reality crossed by troubled affects and populated by “ secrets », True or false.
In fact, Jews and Muslims in Algeria remain linked, with the joint attachment to lost Andalusia, sung in the Maalouf Constantinois (Arab-Andalusian music), the popular Arab-Jewishness of the street, similar culinary practices and the search for a common citadent between Jewish notables and Muslims (like the Zaoui, Bendjell, Benchenouf, Stora or Barkatz) for the management of daily affairs.
After the First World War, most of the Jews in Constantine, which constitute the largest Jewish community in Algeria, with more than 20,000 members, abandon the traditional costume. Many speak French and already the second generation begins to lose the use of the Arabic language, even laying its religious vocabulary on Catholic uses, speaking of “ Communion “For the bar-mitsva or” Lent For Yom Kippour’s fast.
A climate of hatred against the Jews
The modalities of this assimilation are classic. They go through the Republican School which develops in Algeria in the interwar period, as well as by commitment to the army or political parties. Young Jews from Constantine will go through the normal school of teachers. These “ Hussars of the Republic »Will help generalize the use of French, Arabic becoming a language only used in a private framework.
However, anti -Semitism persisted in the 1920s, with Latin unions on which the anti -Semitic municipalities of the DR Soft and Jean Menunier, then, in the 1930s, even more influential than the local sections of the far -right parties like the PSF or the Ppfthe Latin friendships of Father Gabriel Lambert, mayor since 1933, who openly took for program, from 1937, the fight against the Jews and the Communists. In Constantine, the mayor Émile Morinaud creates French friendships for “ Organize the defense against the Israelites of Constantine ». His supporters demonstrate in the streets of the city cries of “ Down with the Jews ! The youpins in the ravine ! ».
It is in this climate that the anti -Jewish riots of August 5, 1934 burst, where 27 Jews were killed by Muslim rioters. The army only intervenes several days later. Can we reduce this massacre to a community confrontation ? This is where Joshua Cole’s book expresses all its novelty, evoking, from new archives, the implementation of a provocation, organized by a sulphurous character: Mohammed El Maadi.
The provocateur
By exacerbating the differences in citizenship, very real, between Jews and Muslims (the latter pay tax, but are not politically represented), the “ provocative El Maadi methodically organizes his plot in the Jewish district by the assassination of members of the Jewish community. Joshua Cole writes:
Convincing evidence shows that El Maadi was in the attacal building when five people were killed there, and this evidence also located it near four other sites where thirteen people were killed at their home or in a business. (…) Taking into account the time and place of crimes, it is therefore possible that twenty assassinations of Jews out of the twenty-five committed that day be the work of a single group. These murders followed one another fairly quickly in a very circumscribed district, between 9 a.m. and the beginning of the afternoon of August 5.
The provocative is manipulated, supported by European far -right European circles of the city, with the aim of blocking Muslims’ access to the life of the city. This fact will be hidden by the colonial authorities of the time, under the strong influence of the fascinating movements, in high rise in 1934. French military, the one who will pretend to be an intransigent Algerian nationalist with his Muslims comrades belonged to the hood, and he will then be found Pétainiste, Gestapo agent during the war, co-founder of the North African brigade Nazi. After 1945, El Maadi took refuge in Cairo, where he died of cancer in 1953.
The provocateur is an essential and fascinating history book, to be in the complex relationships between Jews and Muslims today, in the Maghreb, in the Middle East as elsewhere.