Published21. February 2024, 07:48
Paris: Manouchian and his foreign brothers-in-arms enter the Pantheon today
Eight years after their death, it is the ultimate recognition for these long-forgotten shadow fighters. The ceremony will take place at 6:30 p.m.
The stateless poet Missak Manouchian and twenty-three of his comrades in arms enter the Pantheon in Paris this Wednesday, February 21, 2024.
AFP
To foreign resistance fighters, France grateful: the stateless poet Missak Manouchian and twenty-three of his comrades-in-arms enter this Wednesday, February 21, 2024, at 6:30 p.m., at the Pantheon in Paris, 80 years after their death, ultimate recognition for these fighters of the long forgotten shadow.
“Jews, Hungarians, Poles, Armenians, communists, they gave their lives for our country,” greeted French President Emmanuel Macron in the daily L’Humanité.
With them, “it is the entire “communist and foreign resistance” which enters the temple of the great figures of the Nation, thus joining Jean Moulin and the Gaullist resistance, honored since the 1960s.
The Head of State signs his fourth pantheonization after those of the writer Maurice Genevoix, Simone Veil, figure of French and European political life, and the Franco-American music hall star Joséphine Baker. He also announced that of Robert Badinter, who brought about the abolition of capital punishment as Minister of Justice, who died on February 9.
As with previous national tributes, controversy arose again with the announced presence of Marine Le Pen, invited as leader of the National Rally group (far right) to the National Assembly.
“Unacceptable”, “unbearable”, deplore the committee supporting the pantheonization of Missak Manouchian and the families, who accuse the National Front, of which the RN is the heir, of having been founded by “Nazis and collaborationists” .
The Red Poster
In the midst of the debate on immigration and the withdrawal of identity from a part of society, the tribute to these foreign fighters, “French through heart and bloodshed”, is also quite a symbol. This demonstrates that being French “is above all a matter of will” and that “it brings a lot to the country”, underlines the Elysée.
Missak Manouchian, of Armenian origin, and his comrades were shot, 23 of them on February 21, 1944 at Mont-Valérien, near Paris. They enter the Pantheon (whose motto “To the great men the grateful Fatherland” adorns the pediment) 80 years later, to the day.
At 6:30 p.m., the coffins of Missak Manouchian and his wife Mélinée, a resistance fighter like him and who survived him until 1989, will go up a few hundred meters to the Pantheon, carried by soldiers of the Foreign Legion, who also made the choice of France.
If the couple remains united in death – they were both buried in the Parisian cemetery of Ivry – Mélinée is not herself “pantheonized”. Manouchian’s other comrades enter the Pantheon in a symbolic way, with the inscription of their names on a plaque.
As for Joséphine Baker’s entry into 2021, the ceremony, which will last an hour and a half, will include numerous flashbacks in images and songs on the life of Missak Manouchian.
Singer Patrick Bruel will read the last letter from the resistance fighter to his beloved and the rock group Feu! Chatterton will sing “L’Affiche rouge” by Léo Ferré, who made the resistance fighter a legend.
Finally
A few steps from death, Missak Manouchian wrote: “Happiness to those who will survive us (…) I am sure that the French people and all the Freedom fighters will be able to honor our memory with dignity”.
Survivor of the massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, refugee in France in 1925, Missak Manouchian joined the communist resistance in 1943 where he distinguished himself in the ranks of the Francs-tireurs partisans – Immigrant workforce (FTP-MOI ), a network then very active in Paris.
“Finally we recognize at the highest summit of the State, the commitment of these fighters, these FTP-MOI who led the armed struggle in the Paris region,” welcomes Denis Peschanski, historian of foreign resistance.
During the trial of Missak Manouchian and his comrades, Nazi propaganda put up a poster in the capital with photos of ten of them, presented as the “army of crime”, on a red background, which will give its name to the song by Léo Ferré.
Some 2,000 people were invited to the ceremony, including Communist Party officials, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and numerous representatives of the Armenian community as well as 600 students.
Tuesday evening, several hundred people also gathered at Mont-Valérien, where the coffin of Missak Manouchian took, in an atmosphere full of emotion, the path of the condemned man’s last moments. Before resting for the night in the crypt of the Combatant France Memorial.
(afp)