“Here is a grave… there too, the mounds have resurfaced”, Nadia is moved. Then she places a stuffed animal on a pile of earth covered with stones. Below, the grave of a child from Harkis, who died in a camp in the south of France and then buried unworthily 59 years ago. This wild cemetery, recently cleared of brush, will soon be the scene of historical excavations to save these children from oblivion.
In a few weeks, this makeshift cemetery located on military land, where many infants were buried without a decent burial between 1962 and 1964, will be the subject of excavations decided by the authorities, to find traces of graves and try to repair this tragic and little-known part of Franco-Algerian history.
It is archaeologists from the National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP) who will carry out these excavations, which will last “several days”, announced to AFP the Minister Delegate in charge of Memory and Veterans Affairs, Geneviève Darrieussecq.
But at the beginning of February, only the roar of an icy wind tears the silence of this field and woods of oaks in the locality of Laudun-L’Ardoise (south), causing the soft toys hanging in the trees or placed on the ground to wobble. anonymous people.
For several tens of meters, mounds of earth, sometimes aligned in rows – where stones were placed to mark them, according to the Muslim rite – emerged from bushy brambles thanks to the clearing.
“It moves me and saddens me to know that these remains have been here for 59 years, hidden in this painful past… these children are our compatriots and they have been forgotten,” Nadia Ghouafria, 50, told AFP. , daughter of Harkis, and whose parents lived in the former camp of Harkis near Saint-Maurice-l’Ardoise.
“But it relieves me today to see that these children are visible, that they will find a new existence and be rehabilitated”, she adds.
– “Fault of the Republic” –
French Muslims recruited as auxiliaries of the French army during the Algerian war of independence (1954-1962), the Harkis were, at the end of this war, abandoned by France.
About 90,000 of them and their families flee Algeria and are welcomed in France.
Several tens of thousands of people are parked in “transit and reclassification camps” run by the army, with deplorable living conditions.
Among those who died in these camps, a large majority were stillborn babies or infants, according to the account of historian Abderahmen Moumen and family testimonies revealed by AFP in September 2020 in an exclusive investigation fruit of several month of investigation.
AFP had also revealed the existence of this wild cemetery of St-Maurice-l’Ardoise – discovered shortly before in local archives by Nadia – and of a police report dated 1979 compromising for the authorities.
In several regions of France, nearly 60 years ago, dozens of these babies were buried without a decent burial by their relatives or by soldiers, in camps or nearby, in fields. Over time, the cemeteries have disappeared under the weeds, and the families of Harkis, relocated to other regions, have buried the ghosts of this traumatic past deep within themselves.
Between the end of 1962 and 1964, 70 people (including 60 young children) died in the St-Maurice and Lascours camps, including at least ten stillborn babies in the St-Maurice camp infirmary where an epidemic of measles broke out.
Thirty-one people, the vast majority of very young children, are then buried in this field in Laudun-L’Ardoise, near a road with little traffic.
“In these camps, the Republic has not lived up to its values,” Geneviève Darrieussecq told AFP in an interview on Tuesday. “All this must be said, known and acknowledged as the fault of the Republic.”
She qualifies the site of St-Maurice-l’Ardoise as an “illegal cemetery, makeshift, since these are not the rules of burial in our country”, adding: “it is a mistake, it is a breach” of State. “All of this is tragic and I understand that the feelings of the families who lived there, of the Harkis, are very strong in relation to these facts”.
– “Unworthy practices” –
Member of the local association of Aracan – which carries out research on places of memory harkis – Nadia is a whistleblower in her own way.
After two years of dealing with the local archives, in 2019 she discovered the file of the “provisional cemetery of the camp of St-Maurice l’Ardoise+.
However, this file contains a report from the gendarmerie dated 1979, in edifying terms, which attests that the authorities of the time knew of the existence of this cemetery.
Its authors even advise not “to publicize the affair too much, which could have unfortunate twists, especially if it were brought to the attention of the leaders of the movement for the defense of repatriated Algerians, former harkis”.
L’Aracan challenges: why the authorities, informed in 1979 of the existence of the cemetery when the bodies or bones of the children could still have been found – because today these chances are slim – and returned to their families thanks to contacts with the associations, have they not acted?
When questioned, the minister judges that these “are things that are morally abnormal vis-à-vis these families”. “There were unworthy practices there”. According to her, the scope of the excavations is in particular “recognition” and “the path to forgiveness that the President of the Republic wished for”.
In a landmark speech, Emmanuel Macron, on September 20, asked “pardon” to the Harkis on behalf of France.
The Aracan said she was “satisfied” that excavations were undertaken.
Since a white march organized on July 14, 2021, several families have approached the association to find out if “their brother, their sister, their cousins” appeared on the cemetery’s burial register, explains Nadia.
These families “are in search of truth” and “answers to their questions”, for the “memory of their parents”, she breathes, before contemplating the mounds of earth enveloped in silence.