Acting

Gaston Revel

Gaston Revel, born in Laure-Minervois (Aude) on February 20, 1915, and died on January 27, 2001, in Carcassonne, was a French anti-colonial communist activist. He was a schoolteacher, a communist municipal councilor in Bougie (representing the second electoral district, a nearly unique case in Algeria), head of the local CGT union, and a local correspondent for the newspaper Alger Républicain. Born in the Aude region, he entered the teacher training college in Carcassonne in October 1933. In September 1936, he transferred to the teacher training college in Bouzaréah, near Algiers, to learn how to teach the "natives." Politically, Gaston Revel was initially drawn to the SFIO (French Section of the Workers' International). He supported the Popular Front. In the late 1930s, he moved closer to the communists. In September 1937, he began his military service in Saint-Cloud. On September 1, 1939, the war began. He was mobilized in Moselle, along the Maginot Line. After the defeat of the French Army, he was demobilized on July 26, 1940. He obtained his first teaching position in Aïn Tabia, a small village in the Kabylie region of Collo, a forested mountain range in northern Constantine. There, he discovered a deplorable Algeria. Appointed to Bougie (Bejaïa) in 1942, he witnessed the Anglo-American arrival during Operation Torch. He was incorporated into the Army of Africa and thus participated in the Tunisian campaign and the Allied landings in Provence (September 1944). From May to September 1945, he was in occupied Germany.