Henri Alleg

After Editions de Minuit, a French publishing house, released his memoir La Question in 1958, Alleg gained international recognition for his stance against torture, specifically within the context of the Algerian War (1954–1962).

[3] His early educational years coincided with the Spanish Civil War, during which time he was met with an increasingly politicized school environment with Italian refugees who opposed Mussolini arriving in France along with Jewish Germans.

A fifteen year old Georgette Cottin served as an intermediary with the leaders of the Jeunesses Communistes and supplied a typewriter and roneo saved from the headquarters of the Youth Hostels of Algiers which made it possible to publish a few issues of the Jeune Garde newspaper.

While in French custody, Alleg was submitted to many kinds of cruel tortures, both physical and mental, in an effort to get him to reveal the names of those who had sheltered him for the past several months.

Despite the intensity of his torture and the relentless pursuit of answers by the French "paras", Alleg never talked or revealed the names of anyone who aided or abetted him in his undercover life.

[6] As his French torturers realized that Alleg would rather die than betray those who hid him, they transferred him to Lodi camp in Algiers, where he recovered at the Barberousse military hospital and prison.

His wife, Gilberte, who at the time had been deported from Algeria, would receive the pages, type them, and distribute them to the French literary and journalistic connections that Alleg had made during his tenure at the Algier républicain.

Gilberte worked tirelessly to present the memoir to various publishing houses all while campaigning to raise awareness around the reality of what was transpiring in Algeria.

Despite the seizure of articles pertaining to or citing the book, La Question itself became a "near bestseller and a subject of lively debate" in the French nation.

"[10] The "trial", which was held in November 1957, found Alleg guilty of attacking the external safety of the state and attempting to reconstitute a dissolved league.

However, as a result of M. Alleg's charges against the paratroopers, the general commanding officer in Algiers ordered an inquiry to be opened against "persons unknown" for "blows and injuries.

Declared persona non grata in Algeria following the 1965 military coup d'état of Houari Boumédienne, Alleg moved again to France in the Paris region, where he lived until his death in 2013, aged 91.