Nadja Makhlouf, Henda from the series De l’invisible au visible: Moudjahidate, femmes combattantes, 2014, Archival pigment print, 14.2 x 20.8 in.
Henda
Born July 1st, 1927, Algiers Casbah, Algeria.
Actress in the artistic troupe of the National Liberation Front (FLN).
Henda becomes aware of colonial discrimination at school and joins the anti-colonial Algerian Scouts in the Casbah, Algiers. She is trained as a professional nursing assistant by the Catholic “White Sisters.” When her brother-in-law is arrested by the French, she leaves for Paris. Her plan shifts when she meets a Tunisian woman at the Algerian border and decides to go with her to Tunis, where she encounters other Algerians involved with the FLN. She is contacted by the playwright Moustapha Kateb, director of the FLN dance troupe, who asks her if she can dance. She replies “yes” and is recruited on the spot. The group tours around the world, performing in Egypt, Iraq, China, the former Yugoslavia, Libya and the Soviet Union. They stage the play The Children of the Casbah (Ibna El-Casbah) by Abderrahmane Boualem Rais. Premiering in Tunis on May 10th, 1959, it chronicles the lives of three brothers from the Algiers Casbah who join the anti-colonial struggle. Patriotic songs are sung at the beginning and end of each performance, and the Algerian flag is waved. Theatre forms a space in which the anti-colonial struggle can be propelled by means other than arms, forging global solidarities with the Algerian cause. The idea is to tell the Algerian story through song and theatre. The troupe moves to the Tunisian border in 1958 to be on the battle front against French colonialism.
Henda returns to Algiers at the end of the war in 1962. She still lives there.
Nadja Makhlouf, Alice Cherki from the series De l’invisible au visible: Moudjahidate, femmes combattantes, 2014, Archival pigment print, 15.7 x 23.6 in.
Alice Cherki
Born in 1936, Algiers.
Neuropsychiatrist alongside Frantz Fanon.
During World War Two, Alice Cherki discovers racism and segregation. As a Jewish child, she is expelled from school at the age of 3-4 under the anti-Semitic laws introduced by the Vichy Regime in October 1940. She grows up in a society marked by racism and segregation with Europeans, Jews and Arabs living apart in their communities. At the age of 18, she enrolls in medical school and realizes that segregation also exists in the medical profession. In 1955, she starts collecting medical supplies for the FLN guerrillas and distributes leaflets. She meets the Martinique psychiatrist Frantz Fanon who offers her work at the psychiatric hospital in Blida, south of Algiers, which she accepts. Most of Fanon’s interns shelter guerrillas and wounded Algerians. When Fanon is arrested and expelled from Algeria in January 1957, the interns and nurses at the hospital are threatened with arrest. Alice decides to go to Paris illegally, where she continues to fight for Algerian independence, both with the FLN in France and the small underground network of French people who are opposed to the war. In 1958, she moves to Tunisia where she again meets Fanon. In early 1959, as part of a scholarship granted to Algerian students, she goes to East Germany where she continues her training as a neuropsychiatrist. She returns to Tunisia in 1960 where she cares for Algerian refugees until a cease-fire is agreed between the French Government and the FLN in March 1962. Together with Janine Belkhodja, she volunteers to return to Algiers to work in the suburbs of Belcourt and Kouba. There, she tends to wounded Algerians who were unable to go to the hospital due to the attacks by hardline French settlers in the Secret Army Organization (OAS).
A few months after independence, Cherki returns to Paris to finish her training as a child psychiatrist.
Alice still lives in Paris.
Nadja Makhlouf, Elyette Loup from the series De l’invisible au visible: Moudjahidate, femmes combattantes, 2014, Archival pigment print, 13.3 x 20 in.
Elyette Loup
Born January 21st, 1934, Birtouta, Algeria.
Liaison officer, Algerian Communist Party (PCA).
Working as a liaison officer for the Algerian Communist Party (PCA) during the war, Elyette Loup distributes leaflets and smuggles messages for the PCA. As a native Frenchwoman, she can easily move around Algiers. When denounced for her clandestine activities, she goes on the run from French paratroopers. Arrested by the French in 1957, she is tortured and imprisoned for three years, first in Algeria, then in France. Freed in 1960, she procures false papers and goes underground in Algeria until the end of the war. In 1962, she marries an Algerian activist.
Elyette still lives in Algiers.
Nadja Makhlouf, Malika Lamri from the series De l’invisible au visible: Moudjahidate, femmes combattantes, 2014, Archival pigment print, 13.9 x 20.8 in.
Malika Lamri
Born May 2nd, 1933, Algiers Casbah, Algeria.
Bomb carrier.
Malika Lamri is recruited into the FLN with a friend, also called Malika, by her husband, a rural guerilla fighter. She transports and plants bombs in Algiers during the Battle of Algiers (1956-57) following the arrest of the leading female bombers. In 1957, she is denounced and then arrested by French paratroopers. She is tortured and imprisoned for four and a half years. She will not see her four children (sent away and split up in France) until a few years after the war.
Malika dies in the spring of 2013.
Nadja Makhlouf, Fatima Kade from the series De l’invisible au visible: Moudjahidate, femmes combattantes, 2014, Archival pigment print, 20.8 x 11 in.
Fatima Kade
Born in 1923, Algeria.
Rural guerilla fighter.
Fatima Kade fights with FLN maquisards (rural guerilla fighters) in the Kabyle Mountains. She is in charge of the weapons arsenal and cooks for the men. She is recruited at the same time as her husband. When he is killed by the French, she swears to avenge his death and continue the fight. Summoned to the frontlines, she leaves her children with the neighbors, and two of them die from illness.
For the last ten years of her life, she is blind. Fatima dies in winter 2012.
Nadja Makhlouf, Gylberte Sportisse from the series De l’invisible au visible: Moudjahidate, femmes combattantes, 2014, Archival pigment print, 9.3 x 20.8 in.
Gylberte Sportisse
Born September 17th, 1917, Algiers.
Activist in the Algerian Communist Party (PCA).
Born Gylberte Chermouilli to a Jewish father and a Christian mother, she joins the Algerian Communist Party (PCA) as an activist in 1937 at a moment of intense anti-communist repression. At the beginning of World War Two, the PCA is banned due to its anti-war stance. Arrested in late 1939 for anti-militarist activities, she is incarcerated for two years at the Maison-Carrée prison, in the suburbs of Algiers. Upon her release, she resumes her work in the PCA and marries a comrade who is, like her, Jewish. This marriage ends in divorce, but she remarries another party member, Taleb Bouali, in 1945. He is a union official who rises to the rank of general secretary. When the Algerian War of Independence breaks out in November 1954, her husband takes up arms, but is killed in combat a few years later. Gylberte Sportisse works as secretary for the Algerian daily Republican Algiers (Alger Républicain), which has strong ties to the PCA. As a result of her continuing activism, she is arrested and expelled from Algeria to France in 1957. From 1958 to 1962, she is part of the PCA delegation stationed outside of Prague.
She returns to Algeria in 1962 and becomes an Algerian citizen, resuming work on the daily Republican Algiers. She marries William Sportisse, another prominent PCA member. The PCA opposes the 1965 coup which overthrows President Ahmed Ben Bella. This leads to Gylberte’s arrest and imprisonment in 1966. Released in 1967, she works for the rest of her professional career as secretary administering the social security system in Algiers.
Threatened by Islamists, Gylberte and William go into exile in France in 1994. They still live in France and continue to be activists in the French Communist Party.
Nadja Makhlouf, Farida Hamdiyous from the series De l’invisible au visible: Moudjahidate, femmes combattantes, 2014, Archival pigment print, 12.7 x 20.4 in.
Farida Hamdiyous
Born December 28th, 1940, Souk Ahras (close to the Tunisian border).
Nurse.
Farida Hamdiyous is the fifth daughter in her family to enlist in the Algerian anti-colonial struggle. She completes a five-month training program to become a nurse and then works at Habib Thameur Hospital in Tunis, caring for the wounded. She is transferred to the Algerian-Tunisian frontier where she tends to FLN fighters. She regularly travels from village to village to help war-affected families. When the Algerian War of Independence ends in 1962, she continues to work as a nurse.
Farida now lives in Algiers.
Nadja Makhlouf, Assia Tafat from the series De l’invisible au visible: Moudjahidate, femmes combattantes, 2014, Archival pigment print, 11.85 x 20.4 in.
Assia Tafat
Born November 18th, 1946, Algeria.
Protester.
Assia Tafat participates in her first FLN demonstration in 1960. Despite her mother’s protestations, she joins her neighbor and sister in regular demonstrations. Each time the French Army visits her home, she feigns ill to avoid answering their questions and avoid suspicion of being a protester. It takes the Algerian authorities more than fifty years to discover that she is the famous “high school girl in a floral dress.”
Assia still lives in Algiers.
Nadja Makhlouf, Janine Belkhodja from the series De l’invisible au visible: Moudjahidate, femmes combattantes, 2014, Archival pigment print, 13.2 x 20.8 in.
Janine Belkhodja
Born April 2nd, 1928, Algiers.
Obstetrician and Gynecologist
Janine Belkhodja works as a school hygiene doctor in Boufraik, where she is in contact with the French Communist Party and the FLN. She procures medical supplies for the FLN and distributes political tracts in favor of independence. She is arrested and expelled from Algeria in 1957. From 1958 onwards, she works in Tunis as a doctor carrying out surgery on wounded Algerian soldiers.
In 1967, she opens the first National Centre for Birth Regulation and Family Planning at the Mustapha Hospital, Algiers.
Janine dies in the summer of 2013.
Nadja Makhlouf, Aouali Ouici Senouci from the series De l’invisible au visible: Moudjahidate, femmes combattantes, 2014, Archival pigment print, 17.4 x 36.5 in.
Aouali Ouici Senouci
Born in March 1938, Tlemcen, Algeria.
Controller.
Aouali Ouici Senouci is conscious of what her country is being subjected to from an early age. Her father often tells her: “The colonizer is a traitor, don’t trust him.” She is taught Algerian history and learns patriotic songs at her local madrasa (Islamic school). Interested in joining an FLN cell, she is invited by a comrade, along with other classmates, to come aboard the FLN’s fighting arm. She accepts immediately and leaves to join the maquis (units of rural guerilla fighters). A female comrade writes in a letter that “the love of your country is an act of faith,” and she never forgets this. In 1956, she leaves for the Algerian cities of Marnia and then Nedroma. She is entrusted to a nurse who trains her as a paramedic and is then transferred to Oujda, Morocco, close to the Algerian border, where she works with Colonel Boussouf. There, she discovers the reality of army life. In the morning, she undergoes military training - weapons handling, lessons in ambush and combat tactics - while attending political education classes in the afternoon. She is a “controller,” coordinating the overall strategy in the border region. She is responsible for typing up war and psychological action reports by intercepting French messages. This intelligence is then used against the French. She creates the newsletter The Future (L’Avenir) in order to counter French propaganda and better inform Algerian refugees in Morocco. With independence gained in early July 1962, she helps organize the return of these refugees to Algeria.
She returns to Tlemcen, Algeria a little later and works for the Ministry of Tourism until her retirement.
Aouali now lives in Algiers.
Nadja Makhlouf, Zoulikha Bekkadour from the series De l’invisible au visible: Moudjahidate, femmes combattantes, 2014, Archival pigment print, 11.6 x 20.8 in.
Zoulikha Bekkadour
Born March 1st, 1934, Tiaret, Algeria.
Member of the central committee of the General Union of Algerian Muslim Students (UGEMA).
Zoulika Bekkadour is the first woman to be elected to the central committee of the General Union of Algerian Muslim Students (UGEMA). Following the “disappearance” of several students during the ever worsening violence in Algiers, the Union launches a strike on May 19th, 1956. She decides to join the Algerian fighters and goes underground. In 1957, she is arrested and incarcerated at the El Harrach prison. She escapes to Switzerland in late 1960, where the UGEMA is reconstituted. From 1961 onwards she travels to the former Yugoslavia, Iraq and Austria to attend international conferences on women’s rights.
After independence, she completes a thesis with Pierre Bourdieu in Paris. She returns to Algeria in 1964 and works in the university sector.
Zoulikha still lives in Algiers.
Nadja Makhlouf, Afoun Horra from the series De l’invisible au visible: Moudjahidate, femmes combattantes, 2014, Archival pigment print, 23.6 x 11.8 in.
Afoun Horra
Born in 1940, Algeria.
Nurse.
Orphaned at an early age, Afoun lives with her sister. Her brother-in-law directs her towards militant activism. Unbeknownst to her, he leaves messages for other militants in her school bag. She joins the maquis at 16 and remains with them until independence is achieved. Affiliated with the Wilaya 5 sector, she trains as a nurse and learns how to treat victims of Napalm.
After independence, she becomes a health technician in Algiers.
Afoun still lives in Algiers.
Nadja Makhlouf, Jacqueline Guerroudj from the series De l’invisible au visible: Moudjahidate, femmes combattantes, 2014, Archival pigment print, 13.8 x 20.8 in.
Jacqueline Guerroudj
Born in 1919, Rouen, France.
Anti-colonial fighter, sentenced to death (pardoned).
Jacqueline studies philosophy and law before she decides to move to Algeria in 1948 to become a teacher in Tlemcen. She discovers Algeria with her husband Pierre Mine, a philosophy teacher in Tlemcen. They have a daughter, Danielle Mine Djamila Amrane, who also fights for Algerian independence and is imprisoned during the war. In 1950, she remarries Abdelkader Guerroudj who oversees a group of anti-colonial fighters in Algeria. Jacqueline becomes his liaison officer six years later. In 1955, the Guerroudjs are deported to France by order of the Prefect of Oran for “anti-French remarks and disturbance of public order.” They live in Rouen with Jacqueline's family for a few months. At the beginning of 1956, the Guerroudj family’s banishment is revoked and they return to Algeria, but are not allowed to stay in the Oran area. The couple settle in the eastern suburbs of Algiers. Jacqueline’s activities multiply and she takes on greater risk. She transmits instructions, transports reports and false documents, and hides militants, weapons and eventually bombs. She is responsible for transporting bombs prepared by Abderrahmane Taleb (the FLN’s bomb maker) for Fernand Iveton in the sabotage operation of the gas factory at El Hamma. Iveton is guillotined in February 1957 after Guy Mollet refuses to pardon him. The same year the Guerroudjs are arrested and tortured along with Abderrahmane Taleb in the throes of the battle of Algiers. Jacqueline is sentenced to death and taken immediately to El Harrach. The couple is partially pardoned in 1959, along with many other prisoners, with their sentence commuted to life imprisonment. Jacqueline is transferred to prisons in Marseille, Paris, Toulon, Toulouse, and finally Pau.
Released in April 1962, she returns to Algeria and works in the Algiers Faculty of Law’s library until her retirement.
Jacqueline passed away on January 18th, 2015.
Nadja Makhlouf, Izza Bouzekri from the series De l’invisible au visible: Moudjahidate, femmes combattantes, 2014, Archival pigment print, 23.6 x 15.8 in.
Izza Bouzekri
Born September 15th, 1928, Algiers.
Typist.
Izza is immersed in activism and nationalism since childhood. Her grandfather tells her many stories about life during colonization. When she obtains her school certificate, she is told she will not be allowed to pursue her studies because she is a native Algerian. She goes to the madrasa (Islamic school) to learn Arabic. In 1947, the Algerian Popular Party (PPA) asks her to join them. She accepts and meets Mama Chentouf, among many other women. All these students of the madrasa meet, organize and nurture the idea of a national uprising. She falls ill and must be hospitalized in Annecy, where she takes the opportunity to train as a shorthand typist. On her return, she works as a typist for Mr. Boyer, Esq. until 1955. At the same time, she is invited to join the liberation movement. Abane Ramdane°, who becomes her husband in 1956, recruits her as a typist for the FLN. Together they offer shelter militants in their house. This is how she meets the announcer Fatima Zékle and her secretary Nassyma Hablal. Ramdane gives her flyers that she types in the law office and hides under a pile of files. While in prison, Ramdane asks her to operate with the utmost discretion and to cover her face to avoid recognition. At the end of 1957, the capital becomes too dangerous and she is asked to leave for Tunis. With no news of Ramdane, who had left for Morocco, she and her son wait for his return. Eventually she tells her son that Ramdane died honorably on the battlefield when he had in fact been assassinated. Izza is responsible for typing up the records of the Soummam Congress. In 1959 she remarries the Algerian activist, Dehils Slimane, a close friend of Abane Ramdane.
Izza passed away in May 2017.
°Algerian politician who played a key role in the history of the liberation war. He is still considered the “most political” leader of the FLN, nicknamed “the architect of the revolution.”
Nadja Makhlouf, Malika Benchenouf from the series De l’invisible au visible: Moudjahidate, femmes combattantes, 2014, Archival pigment print, 15.8 x 23.6 in.
Malika Benchenouf
Born June 6th, 1941, Algiers Casbah.
Fundraiser and arms carrier in France (Roubaix, Lyon).
Born into a family of militants, Malika follows in the footsteps of her father, a political activist for the Algerian People’s Party (PPA) who was detained and released in 1948 for undermining the security of the State. After his release, the party suggests he go to Roubaix to recruit militants for the FLN. He accepts and he and his family move. Benchenouf is twelve at the time and immediately begins working with the FLN in France. In 1953, one of her first missions is to drop leaflets (in the mailboxes of French people and Algerians) in Roubaix to announce that the war is approaching. At the age of 15, she is suspected of being an activist by the police and is arrested, interrogated and released after three days. She then serves to gather donations from Paris to Algiers, recruits new women to be liaison officers in the underground resistance, and transports weapons and bombs. She is also a key figure in the organization of the November 1961 demonstration in Lyon for an “Independent Algeria.”
Malika still lives in Algiers.
Nadja Makhlouf, Zohra Slimi from the series De l’invisible au visible: Moudjahidate, femmes combattantes, 2014, Archival pigment print, 8.7 x 20.8 in.
Zohra Slimi
Born July 7th, 1936, Algiers Casbah.
Flag weaver/Patriotic singer.
Zohra’s father, who fought alongside Messali Hadj at the outset of the anti-colonial struggle, instills in her a political conscience at an early age. From a school age, she learns patriotic songs by heart and they inspire her to become a militant. For her, these nationalist songs serve to raise public awareness. From May 1955 onwards, she starts making Algerian flags for the liaison officers who take them to the maquis. At the time, manufacturing these flags was grounds for imprisonment. During the war, many militants seek shelter at her house. It is well-known as one of the great hideouts in the Casbah, Algiers. When paratroopers storm her house, she hooks grenades, weapons, medicine and documents down the well to avoid raising suspicion. Despite the death of her father, who in 1957 was assassinated by the French Directorate of Territorial Surveillance (DST), she continues to fight.
Zohra lives today in the suburbs of Algiers.