1962 — Algiers' Library Burned

On June 7, 1962, saboteurs of the OAS, French extremists desperate to keep Algeria, set fire to the library of the University of Algiers. Some five hundred thousand volumes went up in smoke: centuries of North African manuscripts, Ottoman records, and Berber poetry, irreplaceable works that had survived far longer than any empire.

Algeria was weeks from independence, and the fire was scorched earth, an attempt to burn the country's memory along with its future. Armies can lose a territory and leave. Burning a library is different. It aims at what a people remembers about itself, and that is why this loss still stings.