The sister of Anne-Marie Martin-Zürcher, long-time member of the collaborative platform notreHistoire.ch, worked as a telegrapher at the Signal de Bougy, during the Evian negociations between Algerian independists (Provisional government of the Algerian Republic known as GPRA) and French government delegates during the Algerian war. These agreements were signed on March 18, 1962 in Evian-les-Bains and immediately resulted in a ceasefire enforced to the entire Algerian territory the following day. They were approved in the referendum of April 8, 1962, by 91% of voters in metropolitan France, with voters in the Algerian departments excluded from the vote.

These agreements officially put an end to seven years and five months of war, for which France had deployed about 400,000 men and during which 250,000 to 400,000 pro-independence or anti-independence Muslims were killed (more than one and a half million according to the Algerian state). For France, there were 28,500 deaths among the military, 30,000 to 90,000 Harkis, 4,000 to 6,000 "European" civilians, and about 65,000 wounded.

On the ground, the Evian agreements, far from bringing the expected peace to the population, ushered in a period of redoubled violence and massacres of the harkis.