Noël Favrelière

Noël Favrelière, known as Nordine, born on May 11, 1934 in La Rochelle, is a painter who was a non-commissioned 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 Vautier's film "Avoir Vingt Ans Dans Les Aurès" (1972). He was part of the "Righteous of Algeria" who supported the Algerian people's 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 seven-year-old 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 Tuni…