Pierre Audin, an indignant life

He was a month old when half a dozen paratroopers from the 1^is RCP had come to knock on the door of the family apartment, in the HLM building on rue Flaubert, in the heart of the Champ-de-Manoeuvre district, in Algiers. The soldiers were preparing to arrest his father, Maurice Audin. It was on the night of June 11, 1957, around 11 p.m., in the midst of the Battle of Algiers, the most repressive period of the Algerian war. “If he’s ‘reasonable’ he’ll be back here in an hour”, said Captain Devis, speaking of his prisoner (1). Maurice Audin, 25, assistant in mathematics at the faculty of Algiers, member of the Algerian Communist Party (PCA) and anti-colonialist activist, never returned.

Pierre Audin spent his early years in Algeria, until his family, his mother, Josette Audin, his sister, Michèle, his brother, Louis, left the country in 1966, after Houari Boumediene’s coup d’etat, and settled on the other bank, in the Parisian suburbs, in Argenteuil, Bagnolet… He grew up with the tireless fight led by Josette Audin, to find out the truth, from the first day of her husband’s disappearance and until to his last breath, four years ago. And then he became a mathematics teacher, like his father, his mother and his sister; he had as a pupil, in Argenteuil, the historian Sylvie Thénault, a specialist in colonial Algeria, before working later as a scientific mediator at the Palais de la Découverte, in Paris.

Pierre Audin died on May 28 of cancer a few days after his sixty-sixth birthday and a few days before his father’s death; he died without knowing the name of the assassin of the anti-colonialist militant, without even knowing how he was killed, as his mother and his brother, who also died, would never have known before him. In September 2018, a year after his election, Emmanuel Macron recognized “in the name of the French Republic” that the young mathematician had been “tortured to death, or tortured and then executed by the French army”. He also asked « pardon » to Josette Audin. But the French State had not sought to go further, the army had not plunged into its past, had not attempted to find the last living witnesses. “It is with great sadness that we announce the death of our friend Pierre Audin”, wrote the association Josette and Maurice Audin in a press release. His life “will have been devoted to the incessant fight, alongside his mother Josette, for the truth to be told about the circumstances of his father’s disappearance”.

Dozens of people gathered spontaneously

A little over a year ago, Pierre Audin obtained Algerian nationality. He often happened to cross the Mediterranean, like last year, on the occasion of the 60^e anniversary of the independence of Algeria and for the inauguration of a golden bust bearing the likeness of his father, on Place Maurice-Audin, in the center of Algiers, which has become the epicenter of the “hirak” demonstrations . We had then seen him on the official photos, frail look, white shirt, scarf in the colors of Algeria, smile from ear to ear, hair in fire, mocking look, a quickdraw of a kid. Would his father have looked like him if he had had time to grow old? Tributes fell like rain. The League of Human Rights (LDH), the CGT, the Embassy of Algeria, the boss of the Communist Party, Fabien Roussel, the mathematician and former deputy Cédric Villani… At the foot of the bust of Maurice Audin, in Algiers , dozens of people also gathered spontaneously shortly after the announcement of the death.

For the funeral of Pierre, at the cemetery of Pantin, this June 2, at the beginning of the afternoon, the association Josette and Maurice Audin, had specified that there should be no flowers, no crowns either. She had suggested making a donation to the Maths en jeans association, which introduces middle and high school students to research and who was dear to him. We were supposed to meet at the entrance to the cemetery « immense » et “Bring folding seats if possible”. On the coffin, a lady placed an Algerian flag.

1. The Audin Affairby Pierre Vidal-Naquet (Editions de Minuit, 1958)