The socialist mayor of Marseille, Benoît Payan, called on Sunday to bring the "illustrious resistant" of Armenian origin Missak Manouchian into the Pantheon, during a speech at a ceremony to commemorate the Armenian genocide.
“I believe that France would be great in offering him a place in the Pantheon of great men.
Bringing Missak Manouchian into the Pantheon would obviously be paying homage to the illustrious resistance fighter;
it would also be an act of memory for these millions of Armenians who were victims of a war that was not theirs, ”said the mayor of the second city of France, led since the summer of 2020 by a union of the left. including in particular communists, the party alongside which this activist had fought.
"Without the Armenians, Marseille would not be Marseille"
Benoît Payan, who has made memorial issues one of the major focuses of his term of office, recalled that "it was in Marseilles that hundreds, thousands of Armenian families arrived, rendered stateless by Turkish nationalists", considering that "without the Armenians and without the Armenians, Marseille would not be Marseille”.
A refugee in France after the Armenian genocide, Missak Manouchian formed the “Manouchian group”, one of the most active armed movements of the Resistance.
This group of foreign resistance fighters close to the French Communist Party (PCF) was made up of about sixty men and women of the Francs-tireurs et partisans de la Main-d'oeuvre immigrée (FTP-MOI).
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Pantheon
Benoit Payan
Armenia
Armenian Genocide
Resistance
Marseilles
Paca