Jean Marie Guillon

 

In the summer of 1962 Marseille was more than ever at the heart of the crisis caused by the Algerian exodus. In June, the port received more than half the Frenchmen re-patriated from North Africa, around 200,00, and three quarters of those arriving in July and August. Some were in transit, but many others set up their homes, or tried to, in the town and round about. In the distress of the moment, everyone was trying to find out what had happened to people they knew. The centre of the town was overflowing with new arrivals and their cars – 50,000 of them arrived, without counting the utility vehicles – easily recognisable by their number-plates. The car which this newsreel lingers comes from Oran. As Jean-Jacques Jordi wrote: "every day the Place de la Bourse looks more and more like the Forum in Algiers". People pass on tips, advice, some are looking for somewhere to stay, others for a job, sometimes tempers are lost and there are fights between the "rapatriés" (returnees) and the townspeople – sometimes the North Africans were blamed for everything. This enormous influx made the local population extremely anxious. Most of the inhabitants of Marseille had condemned the attitude of the OAS (a French, far right terrorist organisation attempting to prevent Algeria's independence), even if the ultras of Algerie française had many sympathisers in the region. Some of the crimes committed then were put down to the activists. Even if the pieds noirs (the French colonialists who were forced out of North Africa) remember the humiliations which they suffered more than anything else – indeed they remember them more and more as the events themselves fade into history –  there were gestures of solidarity and compassion, as much in the small communes of the region where often the most impoverished families were housed, as in the places where the colonials landed, where charitable organisations or the rapatriés themselves helped the national or local administrative services.

 A large number of the re-patriated settled definitively in the department which includes Marseille, the Bouches-du-Rhone. In 1965 there were 188,882, more than in any other department in France. The Alpes Maritimes had the third most, just behind Paris, with 105,832 people, while the Var with 57,045 and the Vaucluse with 27,304 were well behind. But there's no doubt that Marseille had the biggest concentration (around 120,000) and they were housed in the units built round the edge of the city (for example the council flats at La Rouvière and Valmante), although work on them was still going on even as the housing problem was at its peak. Despite the difficulties raised by this huge influx, which had taken the authorities by surprise because no one had seen it coming and because so many people arrived in just a few short weeks, in the end the social and economic integration was quite rapid, given how many people there were and how diverse. There remained the painful question of compensation, the reality of which was 53,454 individual files treated over the following years, of which 21,310 were handled by the department of the Bouches-du-Rhone. The political integration was fairly rapid as well. At Nice as at Toulon, but also at Marseille a place was made for the rapatriés in the municipal bodies. At Marseille, the person in the Town Hall looking after the returnees had himself been thrown out of Bizerte (in Algeria) and was chairman of an organisation looking after the French who had to leave North Africa. It was on his initiative that the town put up a commemorative monument on the Corniche Kennedy. Created by the sculptor César, it was unveiled in February 1971 and bears two inscriptions, one is dedicated to the colonial army "which, for years, brought together men of courage and self-denial, without distinction of origin, colour or race," while  the other, on the front of the monument says "The city of Marseille for the re-patriated of North africa and Overseas, to all those whose final resting place is now under foreign soil, though they spent their lives upon it, worked it and loved it. Welcome to those who came back, our city is yours."