"I joined the Liberation Army as a volunteer soldier and I died on the verge of Victory and the goal. Happiness to those who will survive us and taste the sweetness of the Freedom and Peace of tomorrow. I I am sure that the French people and all the freedom fighters will honor our memory with dignity." Two hours before being shot at the Mont-Valérien fort, in a final letter, Missak Manouchian expressed the wish that his adopted country would not forget his sacrifice.

Eighty years to the day after the writing of these words, the wish of the Armenian resistance fighter will be granted. He will enter the Pantheon on Wednesday February 21, alongside his wife Mélinée.

“Missak Manouchian embodies the universal values” of freedom, equality, fraternity in the name of which he “defended the Republic”, declared the Élysée last June, when this pantheonization was announced. “The blood shed for France has the same color for everyone,” the Presidency of the Republic also underlined in a press release.

“It’s a turning point in memory. He’s the first foreign resistance fighter and the first communist resistance fighter to enter the Pantheon,” insists historian Denis Peschanski, scientific advisor to the collective that campaigned for entry into the temple of French immortals of the man who had become, in 1943, one of the leaders of the Francs-tireurs et partisans de la main-d'émigré (FTP-MOI), a communist resistance organization bringing together foreigners and stateless people.

An orphan of the Armenian genocide

Nothing predestined Missak Manouchian to such a fate. Born in 1906 in the town of Adiyaman, in the southeast of what is now Turkey, he was an orphan of the Armenian genocide. He was only nine years old when his father died at gunpoint, killed by the Turks. His mother disappeared shortly after, carried away by famine, during the deportation of the Armenians. Taken in by a French-speaking orphanage in Lebanon, he discovered very early a love for the literature of the Land of Enlightenment and composed his first poems.  

Missak Manouchian (at the cross) at the Jounieh orphanage, in Lebanon, in 1919. It was a French-speaking orphanage of the Safeguard of the Middle East, a humanitarian organization founded by the United States © Wikimedia

In 1924, he managed to immigrate to France with his brother Garabed. The two exiles settle in Paris. Missak then worked as a turner at the Citroën factories. But three years later, misfortune strikes again. Garabed dies of tuberculosis. “Missak is orphaned by his parents, then by his brother. Death is very present in his life,” describes Denis Peschanski.

After losing his job during the Great Depression, the Armenian immigrant survives from odd job to odd job. He also took courses at the Sorbonne as a free auditor and published articles on French and Armenian literature. He also frequented communist circles. Revolted by the rise of the far right, he ends up taking his party card. It was also within the French Communist Party (PCF) that he met his future wife Mélinée Assadourian, also an orphan of the Armenian genocide.

Garabed and Missak Manouchian in 1924, in La Seyne-sur-Mer, shortly after their arrival in France. © Wikimedia

When World War II broke out in September 1939, he was arrested as a communist following the German-Soviet pact. After a short stay in prison, he voluntarily joined the French army. "He wants to fight for France while at the same time the French Communist Party, applying orders coming from Moscow, believes that it is an imperialist war in which the working class has nothing to do ", underlines Denis Peschanski. “But Manouchian’s love for France goes beyond all that.”

Demobilized after the armistice of June 1940, Missak Manouchian resumed his militant activities. Interned in June 1941 at the Royallieu camp in Compiègne by the Germans who ordered raids in communist circles the day after Operation Barbarossa, he was released due to lack of charges.

Missak Manouchian in 1940 in a French uniform, while he was in Morbihan, at the Colpo military base. A fan of gymnastics, he is responsible for the physical training of recruits. © Wikimedia

In 1943, he ended up joining the armed struggle by joining the Francs-tireurs and supporters of immigrant labor, the FTP-MOI. “They were organized into detachments which roughly corresponded to nationalities and origins. There were many anti-fascist Italians, Spaniards who fought in the civil war, but also Polish Jews and even Germans opposed to the Nazis” , describes historian Fabrice Grenard, researcher at the Resistance Foundation.

“Army of Crime”

Appointed military commissioner for the Paris region, Missak Manouchian multiplies the stunts and attacks. One of its groups notably executed in Paris SS Colonel Julius Ritter, responsible in France for the Compulsory Labor Service.

Tracked by a special general intelligence brigade of the French police, Missak Manouchian was finally arrested on November 16, 1943 after a long shadowing. Tortured, he was handed over to the Germans with 23 of his comrades. 

After a parody of a trial, ten of them become the emblematic faces of the "Red Poster", a poster plastered in thousands of copies in Paris and denouncing an "army of crime", made up of foreigners supposed to embody a danger for France. But the opposite happens: these men are transformed into heroes. They will become a symbol thanks to Aragon's poem written in 1955, then put into song by Léo Ferré in 1961. 

Reproduction of a poster which was put up in the main cities of France during the Occupation by the German propaganda services. This document, known as the "Red Poster", presented the portraits of ten resistance fighters among the twenty-three who were to be sentenced to death and shot at Mont Valérien on February 21, 1944. AFP

"Manouchian entered the legend through his action as the military leader responsible for the FTP-MOI, but also through this propaganda operation by the Germans. The latter wanted to show that the Resistance was the work of foreigners, metics, Jews , communists who killed good French people. But this operation failed. There was a reversal. Some still think today that it is a poster of the Resistance", summarizes Denis Peschanski.

On February 21, 1944, Missak Manouchian and 21 of his comrades were executed at Mont-Valérien. Three photos taken clandestinely by a German soldier immortalize the death of those of the “Red Poster”. The only woman in the group, Olga Bancic, was transferred to Germany and beheaded a few weeks later. 

On February 21, 1944, Clemens Rüther, a German non-commissioned officer of the Feldgendarmerie, transported those condemned to death to Mont-Valérien. Placed overlooking the clearing, he took three photos of their execution. via AFP - Clemens Rüther

One of the most beautiful letters in French history

Before dying, Missak Manouchian addresses his wife Mélinée in a final letter. He says he has no hatred against the German people. He also proclaims his love for France and for his partner: “I have a deep regret for not having made you happy, I would have liked to have a child with you, as you always wanted. So I pray to you to marry after the war, without fail, and to have a child for my happiness, and to fulfill my last wish, marry someone who can make you happy.”

For Denis Peschanski, it is one of the most beautiful letters in the history of France: "All letters from those who are shot are to be mourned every time, but this one has a particular and poetic dimension. He filled the literary destiny he wished for with this last magnificent letter. An opinion shared by Gérard Streiff, author of the book "Missak and Mélinée Manouchian. A couple in Resistance" (ed. L'Archipel): "This letter is absolutely splendid, both for its romantic passion, but also for its humanist aim "You have to have an absolutely incredible perspective to express your brotherhood to the German people when you are going to die in two hours."

Died in 1989, Mélinée Manouchian was admitted at the same time as Missak Manouchian, as a wife, into the temple of personalities who marked the history of the French nation. © Wikimedia

At the Liberation, Mélinée Manouchian made her husband's last words public. She will never remarry and never have children. She remained faithful to Missak and kept his memory alive by publishing some of his writings. It is together that the couple will enter the Pantheon. The two coffins will join the crypt of the Republican temple side by side during the ceremony chaired by Emmanuel Macron. For Gérard Streiff, these two beings are inseparable: "She had an important role in his life. They had the same ideal, the same anger. They were revolted against any form of exploitation. She also had an active role in the Resistance. She was integrated into the FTP-MOI. She also escaped the roundup of November 1943 because she was hidden."

“We remade the legend”

But this joint entry nevertheless raises some criticism. In a column published in November and signed by several historians, Annette Wieviorka, specialist in the Second World War, regretted that Missak Manouchian's comrades were taking a back seat. “There were a number of us who found it both unfair for the families and inconsistent with History that it was only Missak and Mélinée Manouchian and not all 23 who entered the Pantheon. They were shot and fell together. Honoring Missak and Mélinée means forgetting the diversity of this group. It is also said that they were foreigners, but there were also four French people. We remade the legend," explains -She.

In a recent work entitled "Anatomy of the Red Poster" (ed. Seuil Libelle), Annette Wieviorka denounces the "glamorization" of this entry into the Pantheon and emphasizes the history of all the members of the Manouchian group: Celestino Alfonso “the Red Spaniard”, Marcel Rajman “the Polish Jew” or even Spartaco Fontanot “the Italian Communist”. "We must also remember that on the 'Red Poster', the Nazis chose to emphasize the Jews by including seven of them out of ten men. This was to say that the Jews were the inspirations crimes committed by foreigners", analyzes the historian.

Polish Jewish resistance fighter Marcel Rajman, one of the faces of the “Red Poster”, executed on February 21, 1944 in Mont-Valérien. © Wikimedia

At the entrance to vault number 13 where the remains of Missak and Mélinée Manouchian will rest, a plaque will however be installed in tribute to their 22 FTP-MOI comrades as well as their leader Joseph Epstein. “A consolation prize. There are already quite a few plaques and we don’t see them. It’s not the same as having a place in the Pantheon,” says Annette Wieviorka.

His colleague Denis Peschanski does not understand this controversy. For the historian, entry into the Pantheon is above all symbolic: “Their names will be inscribed in gold letters. It is a way of officially honoring them.” Resistance specialist, Fabrice Grenard also considers that this controversy has no reason to exist: "When De Gaulle brought Jean Moulin into the Panthéon in 1964, it was also a way of paying tribute to all the resistance fighters. There , it's the same thing. It doesn't make sense to bring in 23 people. We wouldn't remember any names. Through Missak Manouchian, we are paying broader tribute to all foreign resistance fighters. That's why that this pantheonization is important.

Far from these memorial considerations, Missak Manouchian had a thought in his last moments for all of his comrades and for his wife: "Today, there is sunshine. It is by looking at the sun and the beautiful nature that I loved so much that I will say goodbye to life and to all of you, my dear wife and my dear friends."

A mural pays tribute to Missak Manouchian in the 20th arrondissement in Paris. Miguel Medina, AFP

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