2023-06-19 22:48:29
Emmanuel Macron announced on Sunday the entry of this resistance figure and his wife into the Pantheon. A couple who, between 1941 and 1943, were protected by the parents of the singer who died in 2018. The story of an unknown part of history.
At 18, Charles Aznavour played chess with Missak Manouchian. The poet taught him the rules, and played many games, without ever telling him the real reason for his presence and that of Mélinée, his wife, with his parents. Between 1941 and the end of 1943, between two clandestine actions, the couple regularly lived at 22, rue Navarin, near Pigalle, in the modest apartment rented by Misha and Knar, the parents of little Charles.
The story of this friendship begins at the beginning of the Occupation, when Misha finds his family at the end of a phoney war where, engaged among the “volunteer foreigners”, he spent nine months at the Spanish border. Back in Paris, anxious to support his wife and two children, he found a job as a waiter in a restaurant. In his soul and conscience, however, he decides to continue the fight and to continue to resist, in one form or another.
The opportunity will soon present itself. Armenian origins oblige, he speaks still approximate French. The exchanges with the customers are rare until the day when he sympathizes with one of them, who expresses himself perfectly in his native language, and for good reason. Missak Manouchian is, like him, an Armenian immigrant. He also gets to know Mélinée, his wife who, for the facade, holds the position of secretary of an association bringing together the Armenian Youth of France.
The complicity quickly turns into a friendship. The couple of resistance fighters then multiplies clandestine actions, which earned them to be actively sought by the French and German police. Misha and Knar welcome them with open arms and offer them lodging and a modest meal. The food is provided by Misha, an excellent cook, thanks to products that Charles manages to obtain, without going through the black market. The adolescent sometimes finds himself obliged to use subterfuge and he gets away with it perfectly. He is thus able to disguise ration tickets from 50 grams to 250 grams and he becomes an expert in the art of cutting the bottoms of saucepans to make rubber stamps that look like the real thing.
The Aznavours, increasingly committed to the Resistance, also welcomed Jews wanted by the Gestapo, as well as Russians and Armenians who had deserted the German army, where they had been forcibly recruited. As soon as they arrive in rue Navarin, they exchange their military uniforms for more anonymous clothes. Charles collects the uniforms and, at nightfall, regularly throws them into the sewers as far away as possible from Pigalle. His father entrusted him with this mission and, strong in the recklessness of youth, he accepted it without asking the slightest question. Each time, he manages to avoid the German patrols. Looking back, he will admit that he was very lucky. If he had been spotted, and therefore arrested, the consequences would undoubtedly have been dramatic.
On November 16, 1943, following a denunciation Missak was arrested. Misha then understands that for sure he has been spotted and that the danger of an arrest is far from negligible. He decides to rent a room in a hotel, just opposite his home. He sleeps there every night, with Charles. Knowing that the raids of the French police take place, at the latest, at eight o’clock in the morning, the father and the son return to the family home, when they are certain of no longer running the slightest risk. One morning, hidden behind the curtains of a window, they see the police storming into the building. They come out an hour later, obviously empty-handed. In fact, Knar gave them the big number of the woman abandoned by a fickle husband, gone who knows where. She played her role so well, mixing details and lamentations, that the inspectors, drowned by this flood of words and tears, ended up breaking down and turning back.
Charles never forgot Missak and Mélinée Manouchian. He particularly thought of them when he learned that the names of his parents were going to appear in the list of the Righteous. Another form of Pantheonization.
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