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Egypt 1965, Arabs unite to comemorate the burning of a soon to be Arab library in Algiers

France was rapidly tiring of Algeria in the early sixties. So the actions of the OAS were not going to change anything except give Arabist opponents something to talk about. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

This stamp is dramatic visually, showing the burning of the library. The stamp was issued with few differences by many of the other Arab countries of the Middle East. It is dramatic and the burning was done by a Pied-Noir  resistance/terrorist organization called the OAS. What the stamps don’t make clear is that the library and the University were not founded by Arabs, but rather by the French then in their last days in Algeria.

Todays stamp is issue A262, a 10 Milliemimes stamp issued by the United Arab Republic(Egypt) on June 7th, 1965. It was a single stamp issue that commemorated the burning of the University of Algiers library three years before. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.

The pied-noir(black foot) were mainly French Europeans born in Algeria during the time of French rule from 1830-1962. In the last French census of 1960, there were over a million of them and just over 10 percent of the population of Algeria. The cities in Algeria of the time had European quarters where most lived. Many had little experience in France. Post World War II the Arab majority of Algeria rebelled against the French and sought to determine their own future. The French tired quickly of the fighting and President de Galle sought to get France out of Algeria. A cease fire was arraigned and elections were scheduled to let Algerians decide on the future of the relationship with France.

This all seems well and good but forgets the plight of the pied-noir. They did not think it would be possible to live under Algerians. Few were Muslim and many were Jewish. The pied-noir thought it was the duty of France to protect their comfortable way of life. In this they had the sympathy of many of the French soldiers garrisoning Algeria. They formed the OAS, the organization army secret, with the help of several retired French Generals including Raoul Salan, who had fought the losing battle to retain French Empire in Algeria and French Indo China. They sought to create an atrocity that would force the French army to come to the defense of the pied noir. The burning of the pied noir founded University of Algiers library was one such act. The campaign was unsuccessful and there was a mass exodus of pied-noir to a very unwelcoming France in the days leading up to independence. The lack of welcome in France was due to the perception among the French left that the pied-noir were right wing colonial exploiters.

The pied-noir fears of life in Algeria post independence proved justified. Three days after independence an Algerian mob burst into the European quarter of Oran, looting and killing in the street over a thousand Europeans. Nearby French Army units were ordered to stand down and did nothing to help them. The Algerians had agreed to honor the rights of Europeans that remained but soiled themselves by not honoring their promise. Almost all of the 250,000 that attempted to stay in Algeria were gone by the end of the 1960s. The Oran massacre does not seem to come up in Arab grievance stamps. Perhaps they are too busy trying to claim a French cultural institution as their own. French General Salan  of the OAS was arrested and sentenced to life in prison. In 1968 he was amnestied and his military rank was restored in 1982, two years before his death. The most famous pied-noir was philosopher Albert Camus who even studied at the University of Algiers.

Well, my drink is empty and I will pour a few more in  memory of those massacred in Oran. Given what happened there, the Arabs of the time had nerve squawking about a library that didn’t even belong to them. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.