User talk:Cloman55

French who lived in Algeria
My father was born May 5th 1926 in Blida Algeria. He was a French citizen and only child of my grandparents, who were both working in the French school system as teachers and principals.

After receiving a scholarship to Yale University in 1943, he went to New Haven CT and majored in Math and Physics. He worked for the American Optical Company in Southbridge Ma until 1969, then returned to live in France in October 1969, taking his 4 youngest children with him.

I was 14 years old at the time and very much interested in learning more about my father's side of the family. We lived with his parents in Montpellier France, where we all attended French schools. My grandparents had to leave Algeria in the early 1960's because of the war. It was at this time that I learned more about the "Pieds Noirs", who are the French who were living in Algeria before the war.

Many of my family's relatives and close friends who used to live in Algeria, were very bitter with the French government for forcing them to leave Algeria. Many French citizens left behind and lost their personal possessions, such as farms, land, homes, cars, money, etc. The French government eventually agreed to pay these citizens some money to recompensate them for their losses, but this was not done for many years, and the money they received did not come close to the value of what they lost. So I found out that many of these people deliberately collected unemployment and whatever free services they could from the French government as a way to protest.

The Pieds Noirs lived together in their new neighborhoods in France and kept in close contact with each other. They also lived their lives as closely as possible as the way they did in Algeria. They continued to eat the same foods, speak arabic with algerians working in France and going out to eat dinner at cafes and restaurants owned by these friends.

One thing that I learned from my family was that they loved Algeria and the Algerian people. They were having a hard time liking the French from the continent because they were always blamed by them for causing the war in Algeria. My grandparents had moved to Algiers the capital after my father came to America. The city had separate Algerian and French neighborhoods. So many Algerians believed that they were treated like second class citizens. The French government and military leaders in Algeria did not sit well with certain revolutionaries who wanted their independance from France.

The War of Algeria is another topic that is very interesting, and there are several fact-based movies available that accurately describe the living conditions before, during and after the war. Cloman55 Talk August 224, 2011.