VS’is official. Missak Manouchian, a Resistance figure of Armenian origin, will enter the Pantheon, the Elysée announced on Sunday. Emmanuel Macron hailed his “bravery” and his “quiet heroism” on Sunday.
“Missak Manouchian carries a part of our greatness”, he “embodies the universal values” of freedom, equality, fraternity in the name of which he “defended the Republic”, declares the presidency in a press release.
He also pays homage, through him, to all his foreign comrades in arms, Spaniards, Italians or Jews from Central Europe. “The blood shed for France has the same color for all”, underlines the Elysée.
Missak will enter the Pantheon “accompanied by Mélinée”, his wife of Armenian origin, resistant like him, who survived him 45 years and rests at his side in the cemetery of Ivry-sur-Seine (Val-de-Marne), specified the Elysee.
It was the wish of the family, as for Simone Veil and her husband, Antoine, who entered the Pantheon in 2018. The Manouchian couple thus remain united in death, but Mélinée is not herself pantheonized.
A “strong message of integration”
This announcement coincides with the 83e anniversary of the appeal of June 18, which the president will celebrate as every year in the morning at Mont-Valérien, near Paris, where a thousand resistance fighters and hostages, including Missak Manouchian, were executed by the German army during the occupation.
A survivor of the Armenian genocide, a stateless person, a refugee in France in 1925, Missak Manouchian joined the communist resistance in 1943 where he distinguished himself at the head of a very active network before being arrested and shot by the Germans on February 21, 1944.
He became the first foreign and communist resistant to enter the temple of the great figures of the Republic, alongside Voltaire, Victor Hugo or Marie Curie.
Before him, eight members of the Resistance have already been honored since the transfer of the ashes of Jean Moulin in 1964, including four – Pierre Brossolette, Geneviève de Gaulle-Anthonioz, Germaine Tillion and Jean Zay – under François Hollande in 2015.
READ ALSOMissak Manouchian, the Armenian hero of the Resistance in the Pantheon
“I am sure that the French people and all freedom fighters will be able to honor our memory with dignity,” Missak wrote to Mélinée, just before dying, also proclaiming that he had “no hatred against the German people”.
Since 2017, Emmanuel Macron has already pantheonized Simone Veil, Maurice Genevoix and Joséphine Baker. The pantheonization of Missak Manouchian was ardently desired by the French left, in particular by the Communist Party.
“For us, the main thing is that it is a foreigner who died for France who enters the Pantheon”, underlines the communist senator Pierre Ouzoulias, whose grandfather, Albert, was the leader of Missak Manouchian in the Resistance. .
“It says a lot about what the French nation is”, it is a “strong message of integration for today’s young people”, he told AFP.
At the same time, 91 resistance fighters and foreign hostages shot like Missak Manouchian at Mont-Valérien are also recognized as “dead for France”.
Celebrated by Aragon and Léo Ferré, Missak Manouchian also entered the collective memory with the “Red Poster”, posted all over Paris by Nazi propaganda during his trial to designate his group for vindictiveness. The Red Poster is also the title of a film released in 1976 which immortalized the history of the Manouchian group on screen.
A collection in the glade of the shot
At Mont-Valérien, the Head of State will collect around 10:40 a.m. in the clearing of the shot, where resistance fighters and hostages were executed. He will decorate a former resistance fighter, Robert Birenbaum, who, like Missak Manouchian, came from the Francs-tireurs et partisans – Immigrant workforce (FTP-MOI) group.
Georges Duffau-Epstein, son of resistance fighter Joseph Epstein, who was arrested with Missak Manouchian during a clandestine meeting, will also be present.
The president will be accompanied by Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne, Minister of the Armed Forces Sébastien Lecornu and Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces Thierry Burkhard.
The Head of State will then hear the appeal of June 18 and the Chant des partisans before a time of meditation in the crypt of Mont-Valérien, where sixteen members of the Resistance, officers and soldiers who died for France in 1939-1945 are buried. as well as Hubert Germain, the last Companion of the Liberation.
The tribute paid on Sunday is part of a long memorial sequence around the 80e anniversary of the end of the Second World War which will continue in 2024 with the Normandy landings and the Liberation of Paris.