“A grateful France welcomes you, Missak and Mélinée,” President Emmanuel Macron of France declared during a tribute to the Marnouchians. Missak Manouchian was an Armenian Genocide survivor who joined the resistance movement in France and was later executed by the Nazis.
Manouchian and his wife, Mélinée, were inducted into France’s National Pantheon, joining 75 other men and six other women, who have been bestowed with this highest honor.
The induction ceremony coincided with the official visit to Paris of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who along with his wife, Anna Hakopyan, attended the event and witnessed a singular moment in French history.
“The France of 2024 owes you this honor,” Macron added during his tribute, which was taking place 80 years after his execution.
Macron also praised Manouchian’s “love for France to the point of giving his life,” adding, “He wanted to be a poet, he became a soldier in the shadows.”
Born in 1906 in the then-Ottoman empire, Manouchian lost both his parents during the Genocide. He was sent to an orphanage in Lebanon, then a French protectorate, where he discovered French language and culture.
Manouchian went to France in 1924. Living in Paris, he wrote poetry and took literature and philosophy classes at the Sorbonne University — while working in factories and doing other odd jobs.
He joined the communist party in the early 1930s and became editor-in-chief of a newspaper for the Armenian community.
During World War II, he joined the French Resistance as a political activist with an underground group. In 1943, he became a military chief in the armed organization of the communist party, a of about 60 Resistance fighters that gathered many foreigners from Armenia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Italy and Spain, including many Jewish people.
Manouchian is the first foreign and first communist Resistance fighter to be inducted into the French Pantheon.
His group led dozens of anti-Nazi attacks and sabotage operations in and around Paris between August and November 1943, including the assassination of a top German colonel.
Tracked down by the French police of the Vichy regime, which collaborated with Nazi Germany, Manouchian was arrested on Nov. 16, 1943 along with most of the group’s members. He was sentenced to death in Feb. 1944.
Nazi propaganda officers ordered a poster to be made with the photos and names of 10 Resistance fighters, including Manouchian, displayed in Paris and other French cities.
The so-called “Red Poster” sought to discredit them as Jews, foreigners and criminals, and Manouchian was “obviously the first target,” historian Denis Peschanski, who led efforts to honor Manouchian’s memory told the Associated Press. Yet the campaign didn’t convince the French population.
The poster, while “aiming to present them as assassins, made them heroes,” Peschanski said.
In his last letter to his wife, Manouchian wrote, “At the moment of death, I proclaim that I have no hatred for the German people … The German people, and all other people will live in peace and brotherhood after the war.”
The celebration of Manouchians’ life began with the coffins of Missak and Mélinée, both covered with the French flag, being carried in the street in front of the Pantheon by soldiers of the Foreign Legion.
Mélinée, also a member of the Resistance who survived the war, will be buried alongside her husband.
On Tuesday, a somber ceremony was held at Mont Valérien, where Manouchian and his group members were shot by the Nazis. The site has become a memorial to French WWII fighters. The Holocaust Memorial in Paris also was holding an exhibit in his honor
President Macron personally invited students of the Marseilles Armenian Jemaran to attend the event. Accompanied by their teachers, the students filed the Pantheon to witness a singular moment in both French and modern Armenian history.
