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On October 17, 1961, in addition to the massacre carried out on the streets of Paris, the Prefecture of Police planned the imprisonment of at least 11,538 and perhaps as many as 12,520 people of Algerian descent, according to cross-checking of different administration documentary sources. People endured several days crowded in at the Stade Coubertin, in the Palais des Sports at the Porte de Versailles, in the foyer of the Palais des Expositions, and in two policing centers in the 3rd arrondissement and the Opera district.

At these locations, according to eyewitness accounts, many were summarily executed – it’s estimated at least 200 people of Algerian descent died on the night of October 17. Dated October 18, 1961 at 6:30 am, confidential notes from the Paris Prefecture of Police, headed at the time by Maurice Papon, record the horror. Those arrested are listed by the police under the acronym “FMA” for French Muslims from Algeria.

On the night of October 17, 10,009 people were forcibly held in stadiums and sports arenas in the capital, the requisition of which must have been organised in advance. 831 were held at police stations within the city, and 698 at police stations in the surrounding suburbs. There were still more than 2000 people locked up beyond October 24, having been moved to a center in Vincennes.

At the heart of the state machinery, officials were not unaware of the illegality and cruelty of these operations. On October 26, La Commission de vérification des mesures de sécurité publique, a commission of enquiry into public safety, dispatched one of its councillors to the Centre de Vincennes. He produced a damning report, which is known to have got back to the Prime Minister. In this four-page document (viewable below), the author writes:

I do not think I need to hide the very painful experience I had especially in the sorting locations. Hundreds of human beings are penned in behind barriers, lying or sitting on filthy straw (…) the food seems clearly insufficient; sanitation [is] at a minimum. (…) My attention was drawn to many Algerians with bandages on their heads. When asked, they told me they were beaten with batons by the police (…).

Nazi occupation

Alerted by the tragedy, the violence and barbaric nature of these extrajudicial imprisonments hit home with some intellectuals of the time. They immediately compared the events to acts committed during the Second World War by the same French police against Parisians of the Jewish faith.

A secret telegram from October 19, 1961 (below), two days after the tragedy, sent by the intelligence services of the prefecture, expresses concern about a manifesto by the writer Claude Lanzmann – then aged 36. In it the text that Lanzmann was circulating among his friends at the time is quoted:

The response to their peaceful demonstration was a rampage of police violence, and now more Algerians are dead because they wanted to live as free men. By remaining passive, the French would make themselves the accomplices of the racist fury that Paris was the scene of, and would take us back to the darkest days of Nazi occupation. We refuse to make a distinction between the Algerians packed into the Palais des Sports waiting to be deported, and the Jews held at Drancy before their deportation.

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Photo Credit: Elie Kagan, with permission from the Bibliothèque de Documentation internationale contemporaine, copyright Elie Kagan/BDIC

Illustrations: Loguy for Owni /-)

Infographic: Andréa Fradin & Loguy

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Watch the trailer for a webdocumentary by Olivier Lambert and Thomas Salva La Nuit oubliée (The Forgotten Night) available to view from Monday at lemonde.fr.
La nuit oubliée – 17 octobre 1961 – Trailer par lanuitoubliee