From time to time , the memory of the Algerian War surfaced in France . In 1987 , when SS - '' Hauptsturmführer '' Klaus Barbie , the " Butcher of Lyon " was brought to trial for crimes against humanity , graffiti appeared on the walls of the '' banlieues '' ( the slum districts in which most Algerian immigrants in France live in ) reading : " Barbie in France ! When will Massu be in Algeria ! " . Barbie 's lawyer Jacques Vergès adopted a '' tu quoque '' defense , asking the judges " is a crime against humanity is to be defined as only one of Nazis against the Jews or if it applies to more seriously crimes ... the crimes of imperialists against people struggling for their independence ? " , going on to say there was nothing his client did against the French Resistance that was not done by " certain French officers in Algeria " whom Vergès noted could not be prosecuted because of de Gaulle 's amnesty of 1962 . In 1997 , when Maurice Papon , a career French civil servant was brought to trial for crimes against humanity for sending 1 , 600 Jews from Bordeaux to be killed at Auschwitz in 1942 , it emerged over the course of the trial that on 17 October 1961 Papon had organized a massacre of between 100 and 200 Algerians in downtown Paris , which was the first time that most of the French had heard of the massacre . The revelation that hundreds of people had been killed by the Paris '' Sûreté '' was a great shock in France and led to uncomfortable questions being raised about what had happened during the Algerian War . The American historian William Cohen wrote that the Papon trial " sharpened the focus " on the Algerian War , it not provide " clarity " as Papon 's role as a civil servant under Vichy led to misleading conclusions in France that it was former collaborators who were responsible for the terror in Algeria , when in fact most of the men responsible like Guy Mollet , General Marcel Bigeard , Robert Lacoste , General Jacques Massu and Jacques Soustelle had all been '' résistants '' in World War Two , which was a fact that many French historians found very unpalatable
massacre
Paris massacre of 1961
Algerian War