Danièle Djamila Amrane-Minne

See also Djamila Bouhired

Danièle Minne (born 13 August 1939 at Neuilly-sur-Seine) was one of the few European girls convicted for assisting the FLN during the Algerian War. Her mother Jacqueline Netter-Minne-Guerroudj and her stepfather Abdelkader Guerroudj, were both condemned to death^[1] as accomplices of Fernand Iveton, the only European who was guillotined for his part in the Algerian revolt. Her mother was never executed, partly due to a campaign on her behalf conducted by Simone de Beauvoir; her stepfather was also freed.^[2]

Danièle Minne joined the struggle when she was 17, going underground under the nom de guerre of Djamila.^[3]

Arrested and jailed in December 1956, she was sentenced, on 4 December 1957, to 7 years in prison by a juvenile tribunal.

Freed after independence in 1962, she wrote a PhD dissertation on the participation of Algerian women in the war, based on interviews with eighty-eight women between 1978 and 1986; the dissertation was later published as a book, Des femmes dans la guerre d’Algérie (Karthala, Paris). The book was the basis for the film Algeria: Women at War by Parminder Vir.^[4]

Danièle Minne became Djamila Amrane by marriage in 1964. She later worked at the University of Algiers but, by 1999, was a professor of history and feminist studies at the University of Toulouse.

Works

Women and Politics in Algeria from the War of Independence to Our Day Research in African Literatures 30.3 (1999) 62-77

References