Aline, who is the youngest daughter of doctor Jean-Marie Larribére, has just died in Fontenay-Sous-Bois in France, where she had lived since her release from colonial prisons in 1962, and where she was buried on Monday June 10, 2024 at 11 a.m. The grandparents, republican and socialist schoolteachers in Sidi Bel-Abbès, before moving to the city center in Oran, became communists after 1920, had two sons who were doctors, known for their communist commitments, and for the national cause.
Active in the social sphere and like their father in communist activism, both in France and in Algeria. The youngest, Camille (1895-1975), very combative, will end his life in Sig, in western Algeria. Doctor Jean-Marie, the eldest, a gynecologist, was the first to introduce the technique of painless childbirth. He worked as head of the gynecology and maternity department of the future Oran University Hospital Center, not far from the New Town, while managing a small private clinic, located on Rue d’Arzew (today hui Ben M’Hidi), before moving it to the Sea Front side.
Following his death in the aftermath of National Independence, this clinic still bears his name in Oran, in tribute to his commitment alongside all Independence activists. The Larribére brothers were known for their activism in support networks for the Algerian Communist Party (PCA), then the FLN, during the National Liberation War. Jean-Marie’s five daughters naturally followed the family tradition by joining communist activism, via the Union of Democratic Women, the press close to the PCA and social activities, union strikes and political demonstrations.
The eldest Lucie (or Lucette) will become the wife of the Algerian communist leader Bachir Hadj Ali and Suzanne (a doctor like her father) will marry a communist leader, Abdelkrim Benabdallah, originally from Tlemcen and founding member of the Moroccan Communist Party. An active member of anticolonial resistance networks in Morocco, he was cowardly assassinated in 1956, in the presence of Suzanne. Aline, who has just died, experienced colonial prisons, from which she will not emerge unscathed (she will have carried her traumas until the end of her life) and this following the abuse she suffered. Her husband, Emile Schoukroun, a great figure of activism in Oran, recently mentioned in Tsouria’s latest memoirs, joined the ranks of the Liberation Fighters in the maquis of Tlemcen; he was also arrested, tortured and heavily condemned by the colonial authorities. Close friend of the famous architect Oscar Niemer, he passed away very recently in 2018.
All the Larribére girls, Simone, member of Fernand Yveton’s cell, Paulette and her husband, as well as Aline like other Oranese women, will experience prosecution or imprisonment (Gaby Gimenez or Joséphine Carmona…) during the War of national liberation.
One of the girls, Paulette, a medical student, even had to give birth in prison. Aline, who was imprisoned, was then transferred to penitentiaries in France, where she suffered trauma, from which she never recovered. The Oranese in particular and the Algerians in general, who live in an independent Algeria, will remember the commitments and action of this authentic family of resistance fighters. May everyone rest in peace!
Omar Bessaoud And Hassan Remaoun
