‘He wanted to fight for France’: Manouchian honoured as symbol of foreign Resistance fighters

“I joined the Army of Liberation as a volunteer, and I die within inches of victory and the final goal. I wish for happiness for all those who will survive and taste the sweetness of the freedom and peace of tomorrow. I’m sure that the French people, and all those who fight for freedom, will know how to honour our memory with dignity.” Two hours before he was shot at Fort Mont-Valérien in the western Paris suburb of Suresnes, Missak Manouchian wrote a final letter in which he expressed the hope that his adopted country would not forget his sacrifice.

Eighty years to the day after these words were written, the Armenian Resistance fighter’s wish will be granted. He is being inducted into the Panthéon on Wednesday, February 21 alongside his wife Mélinée.

Manouchian embodies the “universal values” of liberty, equality and fraternity, in the name of which he “defended the Republic”, said the Élysée Palace last June, when announcing his “panthéonisation”. “Blood spilled for France is the same colour for everyone,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in a press release. 

“This is a turning point in the way we pay tribute in our collective memory. He is the first foreign Resistance fighter and the first communist Resistance fighter to enter the Panthéon,” said historian Denis Peschanski, scientific adviser to the group that campaigned for him to be inducted into the Panthéon.

Born in 1906 in the town of Adiyaman in the southeast of present-day Turkey, Manouchian was an orphan of the Armenian genocide. He was just nine years old when his father was killed fighting the Turks, and his mother died shortly afterwards, swept away by famine during the deportation of Armenians. Taken in by a French-speaking orphanage in Lebanon, he quickly discovered a love for French literature and began writing his first poems. 

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 enlisted in the French army. “He wanted to fight for France, but the French Communist Party, following orders from Moscow, saw it as an imperialist war in which the working class had no part to play,” said Peschanski. “But Manouchian’s love for France went beyond all that.”

Demobilised after the June 1940 armistice, Manouchian resumed his militant activities. He was interned by the Germans in June 1941 at the Royallieu deportation camp in Compiègne, northern France, after they ordered roundups within communist circles in the wake of Operation Barbarossa. He was later released for lack of charges.

In 1943, he ended up joining the Francs-tireurs et partisans – main-d’œuvre immigrée (FTP-MOI), a wing of armed Resistance fighters composed mostly foreigners. “They were organised into detachments that roughly corresponded to nationalities and origins. There were a lot of anti-Fascist Italians and Spaniards who had fought in the Spanish Civil War, but also Polish Jews and Germans opposed to the Nazis,” said historian Fabrice Grenard, a researcher at the Resistance Foundation in Paris.

Appointed military commissioner for the Paris region, Manouchian launched a series of daring attacks. In Paris, one of his groups executed SS Colonel Julius Ritter, who was in charge of the Compulsory Work Service in France.

After long being hunted by a special intelligence unit of the French police under the Vichy regime, Manouchian was finally arrested on November 16, 1943. He was tortured and handed to the Germans along with 23 of his comrades. 

After a show trial, 10 of the Resistance fighters became the emblematic faces of the now-famous “Red Poster”, thousands of copies of which were plastered across Paris with the objective of denouncing a “criminal army” of foreigners threatening France. The campaign had the opposite effect, transforming them into heroes. They were further enshrined as symbols when surrealist poet Louis Aragon wrote a poem about them in 1955. The composer Léo Ferré set the poem to music in 1961.

“Manouchian not only became a legend because of his actions as the military leader of the FTP-MOI, but also because of this German propaganda operation. The Germans wanted to show that the Resistance was made up of foreigners, métèques (an insulting term for immigrants), Jews and communists who were killing good Frenchmen. But this operation failed. The opposite happened. Some people still think that this is a poster showing the members of the French Resistance,” said Peschanski.

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

Before his death, Manouchian wrote a final letter to his wife Mélinée. In it, he said that he did not hate the German people, and also declared his love for France and his wife. “I have one profound regret, and that’s of not having made you happy; I would so much have liked to have a child with you, as you always wished. So I beg you to marry after the war, and to have a child; fulfil my last wish, marry someone who can make you happy.”

Peschanski feels that this is one of the most beautiful letters in French history. “All letters written by those shot by firing squad are tragic, but this one is particularly special and poetic. He fulfilled his literary destiny with this last magnificent letter.” Gérard Streiff, author of the book “Missak et Mélinée Manouchian: Un couple en Résistance” (“A couple in Resistance”), agrees. “This letter is absolutely splendid, both for its passionate love and humanist purpose. You’ve got to be extremely high-minded to be able to express fraternity with the German people when you’ve got two hours to live.”

After Paris was liberated in August 1944, Mélinée Manouchian made her husband’s last words public. She never remarried or had children. She remained faithful to Missak and kept his memory alive by publishing some of his writings. The couple will enter the Panthéon together. The two coffins will rest side by side in the temple’s crypt during the ceremony presided over by the French president. For Streiff, they are inseparable. “She played an important role in his life. They had the same ideals, the same anger. They rebelled against all forms of exploitation. She also played an active role in the Resistance as a member of the FTP-MOI. She only managed to escape the November 1943 roundup because she was in hiding.”

However, this joint entry has been met with some criticism. In an article published in November and signed by several historians, Annette Wieviorka, a World War II specialist, said it was unfortunate that Manouchian’s comrades had been relegated to the background. “A number of us felt that it was both unfair to the families and an affront to history that only Missak and Mélinée Manouchian, and not all 23 of the fighters, will be inducted in the Panthéon. They were shot and fell together. Honouring only Missak and Mélinée means that the group’s diversity is being forgotten. It has also been said that they were foreigners, but there were also four Frenchmen. The legend has been rewritten,” she said.

In a recent book entitled “Anatomie de l’Affiche Rouge” (“Anatomy of the Red Poster”), Wieviorka denounces the “glamourisation” of this Panthéon induction and talks about the backgrounds of all the group’s members: Celestino Alfonso, “the red Spaniard”; Marcel Rajman, “the Polish Jew”; Spartaco Fontanot, “the Italian communist”. “It is also important to remember that on the ‘Red Poster’, the Nazis chose to focus on the Jews by including seven of them, out of 10 men featured. Their implication was that the Jews were the instigators of the crimes committed by foreigners,” said Wieviorka.

However, at the entrance to tomb number 13, where the remains of Missak and Mélinée Manouchian will be laid to rest, a plaque will be added to pay tribute to their 22 FTP-MOI comrades and their leader, Joseph Epstein. “This is merely a consolation prize. There are already quite a few plaques [at the Panthéon] and we don’t see them. It’s not the same as having a place in the Panthéon,” said Wieviorka.

Peschanski, for his part, does not understand the controversy surrounding Missak and Mélinée Manouchian’s “panthéonisation.” He says that inducting them into the Panthéon is above all a symbolic gesture. “Their names will be inscribed in golden letters. It’s a way of honouring them officially.” Fabrice Grenard, a specialist in the French Resistance, also does not see the move as controversial. “When De Gaulle admitted Jean Moulin to the Panthéon in 1964, it was also seen as a way of paying tribute to all members of the Resistance. This is the same thing. It makes no sense to admit 23 people. No one’s name would be remembered. Through Missak Manouchian, we are paying tribute to all foreign resistance fighters. That’s why this ‘panthéonisation’ is important.”

Memorial considerations were far from Manouchian’s thoughts in his final moments. “The sun is out today. It’s in looking at the sun and the beauty of nature that I’ve loved so much that I say farewell to life and to all of you, my beloved wife, and my beloved friends.”