Exploring archives, recounting memories and writing history: to understand our contemporary world, inkyfada digs into the sources of the past to better understand the present.
For some months during the Second World War, Tunisia was turned into a battlefield. The local population was suffering under the consequences of the war while Great Britain and the US were fighting against Germany and Italy. Through his personal letters, the story of Hermann Franz, a German soldier, gives us an insight into the situation in the country at that time.
"I saw the airplanes. They were grey and the lights around them were crackling like photographers’ flashes. Four planes carried out the bombings. Then two more arrived. After that the group of six planes took off again towards the sea". (Le Temps, October 2, 1985)
More than three years after the first trial of the martyrs and wounded of the Revolution commenced, no verdict has been reached. Colonel Major Khaled Marzouki, sitting in the defendant's dock in the case of the martyrs and wounded of Thala, has even been appointed to a key position in the Ministry of the Interior. The victims, however, are still waiting for due justice.
Feelings of injustice, lack of recognition and misunderstanding - three months after the official list was published, the families of the martyrs and the wounded of the Revolution whose names did not appear on the list are seeking justice. Left to their own devices, tossed between unkept promises and authorities that do not listen to them, they tell their stories.
On the first of June 1955, the port of La Goulette welcomed a human tide that had come to celebrate the arrival of Habib Bourguiba, president of the Neo-Destour party, after his three-year absence. To the naked eye, the vast public celebration seemed to have spontaneously erupted, but the day had in fact been orchestrated down to the very last detail by the nationalist party.
A powerful anti-colonial demonstration broke out in Tunis - completely out of the blue. April 9, 1938 was the culmination of a series of responses to relentless colonial repression.
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