Germaine Tillion is a French ethnologist, best known for her work in Algeria and for setting education programs for French prisoners. As a professor of the École des hautes études en sciences sociales she undertook 20 scientific missions in North Africa and the Middle East. She was a member of the French resistance, she spent time in the Ravensbrück concentration camp. When Germaine Tillion wrote "Il était une fois l'ethnographie", she was in the twilight of her life; she wanted to go back over her notes and work carried out with the Berber population of the Aurès in Algeria, between 1934 and 1940. Here she recounts her experience as a young ethnologist with humor and a unique sense of narrative.