Noël Favrelière

Noël Favrelière known as Nordine born on May 11 1934 in La Rochelle is a painter who was a noncommissioned officer in the French army during the Algerian War and who deserted in 1956 He then joined the ranks of the ALN fighters for ten months He inspired many characters of objectors and resistance fighters including the one in René Vautiers film Avoir Vingt Ans Dans Les Aurès 1972 He was part of the Righteous of Algeria who supported the Algerian peoples fight for their independence As a child Noël Favrelière was marked by the Nazi Occupation and the Resistance fights during the Liberation in September 1944 He lived in Paris in artistic circles then left to do his military service in Algeria with his sketchbook that would accompany him throughout the Algerian period Shocked by the conditions of treatment reserved for Muslim natives he realized that the resistance fighters he had known as a child during the Second World War were now those in the opposing camp He declared to his friends after 1954 If I were Algerian I would be a fellagha In 1956 Noël Favrelière was assigned to the 8th Colonial Parachute Regiment in Algeria During a sweep operation his company killed a sevenyearold Arab girl Other abuses by the French army reinforced his radical hostility to this war At dawn on August 19 1956 tasked with guarding an Algerian prisoner who was going to be executed he left his unit with him and joined the ALN troops on the border of Tunisia and Algeria he would take part in the fighting of the ALN under the name Nordine Wanted by the French army he was wounded in the foot after an air attack Having gone to Tunisia after having testified about his actions in the press he was sentenced to death a first time in absentia in 1958 he was sentenced a second time in 1960 Les Éditions de Minuit published his story Le Désert À LAube in October 1960 It was seized the week following this publication and its distribution was prohibited In 1963 he returned clandestinely to France he held a press conference and exhibited his paintings thanks to Simone de Beauvoir and JeanPaul Sartre Benefiting from a scholarship in Yugoslavia he obtained a degree in Art History in Ljubljana in 1964 In Algeria and then directed the Museum of Algiers from 1964 to 1966 His mother wrote a letter to the wife of General De Gaulle resulting that her son had acted like the General when he had taken refuge in the United Kingdom in 1940 he was pardoned by the latter of his two death sentences in 1966 He then worked at the Renault company in Sofia and Ljubljana from 1967 to 1983 From 1983 to 1989 he became the director of the French Institute of Ljubljana Slovenia then of that of Amman Jordan from 1989 to 1995 He retired in 1999 He drew and painted all his life He was named a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by decree of May 20 1985 Suffering from Alzheimers Noël Favrelière died on the night of November 11 to 12 2017 Noël Favrelière is the subject of various documentaries including Algeria The Two Soldiers His name appears on the stele in memory of the French Righteous of Algeria who supported the fight of the Algerian people for their liberation inaugurated in Algiers in 2002