A group of Pieds Noirs visited Algiers Tuesday after more than forty years of departure from Algeria.

• They chose Kouba, Algiers, as their first station before completing their three days tour to the other places of origin planning to end the visit in Tipaza’s Romanian historical sites.
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• The group, consisting of 84 Pieds-Noirs who were born in Algeria during the colonial period, organized this visit in coordination with the association of the “Kouba’s friends”, a French association founded by eight Pieds Noirs couples who lived in Kouba during the colonial era, a place of the Bourgeoisie during that period.
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• These Pieds-Noirs were very happy when they arrived to the centre of Kouba where a church still stands on the other side. The church turned to a library after the independence of Algeria. They carried a fifty year memories and discovered many changes in the land of childhood.
• “Kouba is our origin… and consciousness… it is always in our minds and hearts, it did not leave us even for one moment, despite we are far away hundreds of miles,” head of the Pieds Noirs’ delegation, Piedmont Berzi, whose last visit to Algeria was in 2005 told Echorouk.
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• “I was born here in Kouba, I spent my childhood days in it… I still remember my happy childhood memories in this city… here is my house of birth, it is in the boanche street, I don’t know its current name,” he added.
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• “I love this city very much that’s why I help the organization of trips for any Pied Noir who wishes to visit Kouba. It is an opportunity to restructure sons of the city in the association of the Kouba’s friends”, he avoided talking about his properties and those of his friends in this association.
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• Echrouk’s tour with the head of the visitors in the streets of Kouba was an opportunity to discover how the Algerians look to the Pieds-Noirs who are also the past colonials.
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• In fact many people who live in Kouba still remember their past neighbours. A 60 year old man approached Mr. Piedmont and told him “Do you remember me?” Mr Piedmont said “Yes, of course”, and they continue a short talk about the past days before they separated again.
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• There were tight security measures on the visitors and many bodyguards who were charged to accompany the Pieds Noirs found difficulties in keeping them far from the citizens who tried to discuss with them and take some pictures. This was a scene where the sensitivities of the colonial past disappear, although apparently!
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• “I was born in Algiers in Albiar but my wife was born here in Kouba. We are here to discover the place however we must also visit my homebirth,” a 60 year old Pied Noir Martin Lerouger said.
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• A French woman approached a group of Algerians who were standing near a fast food and said “It was here”, an Algerian bearded man, wearing a Kamis replied using a French language “No, here was a bar, but it closed”.
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•  Benin Ann Marie, a 50 year old woman shouted once she arrived at a corridor few meters away from a gas station; “ Oh…I know this passage, it did not change. I’m very happy, many things change in this beautiful city but this corridor… Now, there are many cars and people too. All the members of my family are dead and I still remember them here with my childhood memories”, she was crying.
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• Visits of the Pieds-Noirs are no longer the taboo which followed their escape towards France a day after the independence of Algeria. Yesterdays Eldorado has become a dream that can be realized to anyone who wants to visit his hometown several years ago, but not like now.
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• In the past the Pieds-Noirs came in individual visits as French tourists, however, things remarkably changed since 2000 after they were invited to visit Algeria by the president Boutefilka.
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• Many Pieds-Noirs turned their visits to Algeria to exploratory attempts to claim their abandoned properties. They told people who live in their colonial houses that they will resort to justice.
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• Echrouk reported many stories about Pieds-Noirs who tried to get back their colonial houses and real estates such as the story of Jill Altirak who deposited many complaints against Algerians and won orders of expulsion against his opponents.
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• Investigations by Echorouk revealed that interesting facts prove on the involvement of lawyers and notaries as well as officials in the preparation of regulatory and appropriate conditions for the Pieds-Noirs in order to win their cases before justice in return for privileges and properties.
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• It is known that the Commission of Human Rights belonging to the United Nations issued the right of Algeria to recover its properties which were held by France and its Pieds-Noirs on the 1st of November 2006 in the context of resolving the case of a former Pied-Noir in Oran against the Algerian government.