The Oran massacre of 1962 was a massacre of European—mostly French—civilians in Oran, Algeria on July 5, 1962, at the end of the Algerian War (1954–62). Although the majority of deaths were European, Algerians were also massacred. Estimates of the death toll vary widely, from a low of 95 to a high of 3,500.
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The Algerian War had been going on since 1954. The French government of Charles de Gaulle had hoped that its January 8, 1961, referendum on Algerian independence, and the consequent Evian Accords of March 18, 1962, would bring an end to the brutal conflict. The accords, which were reached during a cease-fire between French armed forces and the Algerian nationalist organization the Front de libération nationale (FLN), began the process of transfer of power from the French to the Algerian majority.
The Evian Accords had supposedly guaranteed the rights and safety of the pieds-noirs, French, Spanish, and Jewish colonial residents, in an independent Algeria. However rumor had by then spread throughout the pieds-noirs (black feet) community that their choice was between "the suitcase or the coffin" (exile or death). With armed conflict apparently at an end, the French government loosened security on Algeria's border with Morocco, allowing the FLN increasingly free movement within Algeria. French pieds-noirs and some pro-French native Algerians began fleeing Algeria in April 1962 and by late May hundreds of thousands had emigrated, chiefly to metropolitan France.
Independence had been bitterly opposed by the pieds-noirs and many members of the French military, and the anti-independence Organisation de l'armée secrète (OAS) started a campaign of open rebellion against the French government, declaring its military to be an "occupying power" [1]. A "scorched earth" policy was declared by the OAS, to deny French-built development to the future FLN government. This policy climaxed June 7, 1962, as the OAS Delta Commando burned Algiers' Library, with its 60,000 volumes, and blew up Oran's town hall, the municipal library, and four schools. In addition the OAS was pursuing a terror-bombing campaign that in May 1962 was killing an estimated 10 to 15 people in Oran daily.[2]
On the morning of July 5, 1962, the day Algeria became independent, hundreds of armed people entered European sections of the city, and began attacking civilians At the time Oran had the country's highest percentage of residents of European heritage . The violence, which lasted several hours, included lynching and acts of torture, was ultimately stopped by the deployment of French Gendarmerie.
Estimates of the total casualties vary widely. Local newspapers at the time[3] declared that 1500 were killed. Dr. Mostefa Naït, the post independence director of the Oran hospital center, claims that 95 persons, including 20 Europeans, were killed (13 stabbed to death) and 161 people injured.[2] Other sources claim that as many as 3500 persons were killed or disappeared [4] . 153 French residents are listed at the virtual memorial website.[5]
No effort was made to stop the massacre either by the Algerian police or by the 18,000 French troops of General Katz who were still in the city at that time. Orders from Paris were "do not move," leaving Europeans in Oran unaided. The FLN took control of the city shortly afterward.
Many French residents believed that the massacre was an expression of deliberate policy by the FLN, embittering them and spurring the exodus of pieds-noirs, nearly a quarter million of whom fled the city in a matter of weeks, leaving it two-thirds empty and economically crippled.
At the 1963 trial of Jean Bastien-Thiry, who attempted to assassinate President de Gaulle, defence lawyers referred to the Oran massacre and claimed that Bastien-Thiry's act was justified because de Gaulle had caused a genocide of the European population of Algeria.