Europe 1 with AFP 6:15 p.m., February 21, 2024

80 years to the day after his execution by the Nazis, communist resistance fighter Missak Manouchian will enter the Pantheon this Wednesday, accompanied by his wife Mélinée Manouchian, during a ceremony chaired by Emmanuel Macron. Follow this historic moment live. 

To foreign resistance fighters, France is grateful: the stateless poet Missak Manouchian and 23 of his comrades-in-arms enter the Pantheon on Wednesday, the ultimate tribute to these long-forgotten shadow fighters, 80 years after their execution by the Nazis. “Jews, Hungarians, Poles, Armenians, communists, they gave their lives for our country,” greeted the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, in the daily L’Humanité. Follow the ceremony live

The main information to remember: 

  • The ceremony begins at 6:30 p.m.

  • Missak Manouchian will enter the Pantheon with his wife

  • This is the fourth pantheonization chaired by Emmanuel Macron

Ceremony begins at 6:30 p.m.

Covered with a French flag and carried by soldiers of the Foreign Legion, Missak Manouchian's coffin will walk up Rue Soufflot to arrive at the foot of the Pantheon at 6:30 p.m. On the way, the song “They fell” by Charles Aznavour will accompany the remains of the resistance fighter. A title which owes nothing to chance, since the parents of the singer who died in 2018 had hidden the Manouchians during the Occupation in Paris.

The Head of State signs his fourth pantheonization after those of the writer Maurice Genevoix, Simone Veil and the music hall star Joséphine Baker. He also announced that of Robert Badinter, who died on February 9. As during previous national tributes, the controversy resurfaced with the announced presence of Marine Le Pen, invited as head of the National Rally group to the National Assembly.

>> The complete ceremony

Who was Missak Manouchian?

Born in the Ottoman Empire, Missak Manouchian survived the Armenian genocide of 1915. He was then sent to a French orphanage in Lebanon then emigrated to France in 1924. A worker, he also took courses at the Sorbonne and began to write poems . He then became involved in politics by joining the French Communist Party.

During World War II, he led a resistance organization in Paris called Les Francs-tireurs et partisans - Main d'oeuvre immigrantes. “All these fighters find themselves together in the resistance, coming from very different backgrounds and that poses absolutely no problem because they share the matrix of values ​​inherited from the French Revolution,” explains historian Denis Peschanski.

>> Our complete portrait