My God, who will tell me who my father is?

I left Frankfurt am Main just as I had arrived, no different from when I came back from Uelzen and from the godforsaken hole near Strasbourg where my friend, my partner Adolph – his father’s son – lived. I had to keep going. To follow this path to its conclusion. To the end.

Rachel’s Diary - 16 August 1995

Rachel’s Diary

16 August 1995

If anything is truly futile, it is this: I wrote to the Algerian Minister for Foreign Affairs. I know he will never actually get the letter, it will be intercepted and shredded long before it reaches him, or forwarded to the secret police who will use it as they see fit, just as the accompanying note ‘for whatever purpose it may serve’ suggests. But I thought it should be done and I did it. When the time comes, I’ll consult a lawyer about how to pursue the matter. And in that, too, I’ll go to the end.

Minister,

On 24 April 1994 at about 11 p.m, my parents, together with thirty-six neighbours – men, women and children – were savagely murdered in the village of Aïn Deb, in the province of Sétif, by an unidentified armed group. According to the French news reports, citing those from Algerian television, this unidentified group is unquestionably a group of Islamist terrorists known to the Algerian police force. I expect that you are familiar with the tragedy in question – the matter has certainly been raised with you. Foreign observers and human rights organisations have undoubtedly discussed the incident with you, they may even have called for explanations.

On the list of victims drawn up by the Ministry of the Interior, and sent by your offices to the Algerian Embassy in Paris, my father and mother are listed under names that do not correspond to those in the official records. My mother is listed by her maiden name, Aïcha Majdali, my father by a pseudonym, Hassan Hans, known as Si Mourad. I enclose herewith copies of the official identity cards on which, as you will see, my father’s name is given as Hans Schiller and my mother as Aïcha Schiller, née Majdali, both Algerian citizens. It would seem to me to be entirely usual that the citizens of a country should be born and die under their official names, and that it is by these names that all official information pertaining to them should be published. In this, I do not think that Algerian law differs markedly from the laws in force elsewhere in the world.