Rolland Doukhan (died 2020)

A poet and novelist born in Constantine in 1928, Rolland Doukhan (1928-2020) grew up in the Jewish quarter of the Charaâ and, from 1947, was one of the Jewish contributors to Alger républicain, alongside Kateb Yacine, Henri Alleg and his friend Malek Haddad, sharing the paper's anticolonial commitment until its demise in the mid-1950s. He settled in France during the War of Independence — where he also practised as a dentist — and published the collection Le Jeune Homme-Silence (1963) and then, with Denoël, the narratives Berechit (1991), Juste un instant d'automne (Just a Moment of Autumn; 1994) and L'arrêt du cœur (The Stopping of the Heart; 1998), a body of work devoted to the memory of the Jews of Constantine and to Judeo-Arab fraternity. A proponent of a secular Jewishness, he served as secretary general of the Association pour un judaïsme humaniste et laïque. He died in 2020 at the age of 92.