french → English transcript

I will never be able to express enough gratitude to France for having colonized me. It gave me access to French literature, to Châteaubriant, to Balzac.

It allowed my parents to get out of misery, out of misery, sir. And thanks to France, we are French citizens, that is to say citizens…

So the colonization of Algeria, for you, was the moment… -- …a blessing. I maintain that. Algeria, I repeat what I said at your colleague Benjamin Duhamel's.

Algeria was a cesspool. Algeria was cultivated and developed by France. There were bridges, etc., railways, schools, etc., etc.

None of Algeria's colonizers — because Algeria has had only colonizers for 1,000 years — had done one-quarter of one-half of what France did.

Ask, ask to be shown a hospital, a road, a bridge built by the Ottoman Empire that occupied Algeria for centuries. You will not find them.