Talk:Henri Alleg

Biography assessment rating comment
The article may be improved by following the WikiProject Biography 11 easy steps to producing at least a B article. -- Edofedinburgh 00:13, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikified as part of the Wikification wikiproject! JubalHarshaw 19:04, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Initial article content
Henri Alleg (1921 - ) was a French national who became famous for his role in the French-Algerian 'War Without a Name' (1954-1962) after the publication of Italic textLa QuestionItalic text in 1958.

Alleg moved to Algeria in 1939, and as an 18 year old was intimately involved with the Algerian Community Party. He became the editor of the Alger Republicain, an Algerian daily sympathetic to Algerian nationalism, from 1950 to 1955. The newspaper was banned in September of 1955 by the French authorities. In November of 1956, after many of his colleagues at the newspaper were arrested, Alleg went into hiding. On June 12, 1957 he was arrested by the 10th Parachutist Division in the home of his friend, Maurice Audin who was arrested the day before and would die while imprisoned under questionable circumstances. He underwent one month of torture in El-Biar, a suburb of Algiers, before being transferred to a 'camp' in Lodi (all in Algeria) despite the fact that no charges had been laid against him. Finally, on August 17, 1957, as a communist party member, he was formally charged with offenses against the external safety of the State and the rebuilding of a dissolved league. He was sentenced to ten years in prison, during which he wrote La Question (Question(1958) in English; translation by John Calder) which chronicled the torture he endured throughout the thirty days he spent in El-Biar. Alleg had used the real names of his torturers in his narrative, many of them highly decorated officers. Upon it's publication on February 12, 1958, the text quickly spread shockwaves through the French population, and the French government immediately banned the book for political reasons the same year as its publication, the first book to be banned for political reasons in France since the 18th century. The book was reprinted in March of 1958 by Swiss press, and translated by John Calder and printed in English the same year. Despite the ban, the novel continued to circulate underground in France, and served as a means of revealing the scope of torture during the Algerian War. Alleg escaped from prison and made his way to Czechoslovakia. With the passing of the Evian Accords in 1962, Alleg returned to France and then Algeria. He helped rebuild the Alger Republicain and continued to publish numerous books and appear in several documentaries.


 * hopiakuta Please sign your signature on your message. Thank You.- 00:45, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

There are many issues which need clarification;...

 * There are many issues which need clarification; these are merely some of them:
 * Henri Salem
 * Harry Salem
 * "...attempting to reconstitute a dissolved league."
 * Lodi
 * El-Biar
 * El Biar {I did write a redirect.}
 * La Question
 * paras

There are certainly other issues that need editing.

Thank You,


 * hopiakuta Please sign your signature on your message. Thank You. - 00:45, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Possible POV issues
For what it's worth, I've got two sources here:


 * Ordeal by Torture, TIME, June 9, 1958 (a book review)
 * The Trial, TIME, June 27, 1960 (on his trial and apparent sentencing)

This second source says he was sentenced to ten years. We can infer that he never served that but it would be nice to put that in the article.

The first source includes this passage: "The painful identification that the reader feels with Alleg cannot blot out the nagging realization that, as a Communist, Alleg himself has been a consenting party to the same tortures and to a degradation of man that, for its wholesale scale, dwarfs the war-begotten atrocities of El Biar."

Bearing that in mind, this entire article appears to be too sympathetic to Alleg's side of the story. It needs to be toned down at the very least. While I can believe that Alleg was tortured, we really only have his word that this happened.

His version of events claims he was waterboarded, which raises questions. If he's not lying, was it a different method than what's said to be used today? If it's not substantially different, and if he's really not lying about any of this, then does that make him the only known recipient of waterboarding who didn't break?

These are simply questions. We need more sources. I'm sure some editors here are competent French readers. It would be nice if we could get the French government side of the story, especially from back then.

While we're at it, I'm curious to know where Alleg stood during the Hitler-Stalin pact. We know that his party claimed to be "anti-war" during that time but we don't have any comment from him on that here. I wish this article didn't have so many holes.

-- Randy2063 (talk) 02:11, 6 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Randy, you will need to stop now. Your casual inferrings of an extremely negative tone about living people is appalling to me. Yes, he was tortured with waterboarding: more sources . Additionally, "if he's really not lying about this"? You have NO right to speak this way about a BLP subject; I just found this post by you. Cut the pro-America/Red Scare nonsense--it is not acceptable for Wikipedia. Who do you think you are? Lawrence  §  t / e  05:30, 19 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Everything I said here is a legitimate topic of discussion for this talk page with every intent of full compliance with WP:BLP. Your additional sources do say he was waterboarded but they seem to be based on his book and his other statements.  It's fine with me, though, as I'm willing to take his word that he was waterboarded.
 * I did ask if he's the only known recipient of waterboarding who didn't break. If verifiable, that should go into this article, as well as in waterboarding.  I fail to see why you'd oppose such a request for information.
 * But I admire your diligence. I only wish the waterboarding article were policed with that same respect for BLP inferences.
 * -- Randy2063 (talk) 15:55, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
 * What BLP problems are there on the Waterboarding article itself? This isn't the right page for it, but if you see any, please let me know on my talk page if you don't want to wade into the WB talk again. And my problem here isn't the information or sources on waterboarding, it's your 1) constant BLP-borderline slams and outright bias towards Communists or "lefties", 2) comparing Communists to the KKK on Waterboarding talk, 3) making tactless, brazen, and borderline BLP vios about Alleg and Nazism. Lawrence  §  t / e  16:08, 19 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Just as you've questioned my inferences, the BLP issues at waterboarding are inferred. I'll leave it at that.  I have no expectation that it can be resolved to my satisfaction in the near future.
 * There's no doubt that Alleg was a dedicated communist during the Pact years, and that there's a gap for that time in the bio we have. I never said communists were Nazis.  Their rivalry remained strong even when they called FDR and Churchill "imperialists" for wanting to fight Hitler.
 * I'm also well aware that not all communists fell in with the party line from Moscow. If sources reveal that Alleg spoke out then I'll be the first to say that should go in here, too.
 * On your basic point, if someone speaks out against torture when one side does it, and remains silent when the other side does far worse, then one must wonder how much of that concern is genuinely against torture. TIME magazine has brought this up about Alleg.  I'm just pointing out the source and asking if anyone has anything else on that.
 * -- Randy2063 (talk) 20:09, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Seriously, Randy, I don't recall any mention of BLP concerns on the WB article before. Please let me know on my talk what you think is even a possible almost-maybe BLP concern there, and I promise I will take a look at it. I'm usually pretty hardline (maybe too much) on BLP stuff. I even nominated an AFD of a BLP minor for MFD once. Lawrence  §  t / e  20:16, 19 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I only meant that if WP takes the position that waterboarding is always torture then that means those who've authorized it (like Steven G. Bradbury) are implicated in war crimes.
 * You may not think that's worth considering, but something you should consider is that when the article piles on the supposed traumatic effects, it implies that those lawyers ignored that possibility. The truth is that those effects are overblown.
 * -- Randy2063 (talk) 21:20, 19 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Randy, I find your attempts to defend what is by all sane accounts a hideous and scarring procedure sickening beyond belief. Please do not reply to this as I do not feel capable of communicating with you. Bartleby (talk) 11:44, 20 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry you feel that way, but it doesn't bring us any closer to my original request for information. If it can be called "sickening beyond belief" then perhaps that makes it more important to pursue the points Time magazine made when it said, "Alleg himself has been a consenting party to the same tortures and to a degradation of man that, for its wholesale scale, dwarfs the war-begotten atrocities of El Biar."
 * That side of Alleg has not yet been addressed in this article. Shouldn't it be?
 * -- Randy2063 (talk) 17:43, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

current status
I'm curious (though it isn't really my business) as to how Mr. Alleg's health is. At 91 and after the horrendous ordeal he underwent in 1957, I would imagine he may have some ill health. I read The Question in a college history class a couple years ago, and am amazed at his strength and courage. Since the torture was graphically described, I'm just curious. 74.69.11.229 (talk) 23:34, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

NPOV
Saying he was subjected to "many cruel tortures", though technically true, is a violation of NPOV. It should be rewritten to be more objective. 74.69.9.224 (talk) 21:52, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

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