– Macron honors 24 resistance fighters with induction into the Pantheon
France’s president honored the communist resistance around Missak Manouchian against the Nazi regime at a memorial ceremony.
Published: February 21, 2024, 11:22 p.m
French President Emmanuel Macron delivered a speech during the national tribute to Armenian communist resistance fighter Missak Manouchian at the Pantheon. (February 21, 2024)
Photo: AFP
France has added the communist resistance fighter Missak Manouchian, who was executed by Nazi soldiers near Paris, to its pantheon. At the same time, 23 fellow soldiers who were also executed are honored with an inscription in the Pantheon. “Grateful France welcomes you,” said President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Wednesday. Members of the Foreign Legion carried the coffins of Manouchian and his wife Mélinée, who was also involved in the resistance, into the Pantheon, wrapped in French flags.
The coffins containing the ashes of stateless resistance fighter Missak Manouchian and his wife Melinee were transferred to the Pantheon during the commemoration ceremony on February 21, 2024.
Photo: AFP
Born in the Ottoman Empire in 1906, Missak Manouchian survived the Armenian genocide as an orphan and came to France in 1925. He remained stateless and France denied him French citizenship several times. In 1940 he joined the resistance against the German occupation.
Manouchian became head of a group of about 60 that included immigrants from various countries, including Poles, Italians and Armenians. The group was responsible for around 100 acts of sabotage and attacks on German soldiers. The group was also responsible for the fatal attack on SS officer Julius Ritter, who organized the forced labor of French people in Germany.
Manouchian was arrested, tortured and, after a show trial, shot at the age of 37 on Mont-Valérien near Paris. Several hundred people gathered there on Tuesday evening.
Exactly 80 years to the day after the execution on February 21, 1944, Macron commemorated the communist and foreign members of the resistance, who have so far been neglected in the French culture of remembrance.
The commemoration was also a counterpoint to the controversial immigration law. “Being French is above all a question of the will and the heart,” said the Elysée. Manouchian’s example also shows what contribution immigrants have made to France.
President Macron speaks with Georges Duffau Epstein, son of Joseph Epstein, who was a member of the Manouchian resistance group. (February 21, 2024)
Photo: AFP
Macron, who has been criticized for his government’s shift to the right, was also the first French president to be interviewed by the communist newspaper “L’Humanité”. In this interview, Macron expressly recommended that representatives of the right-wing populist party Rassemblement National (RN) stay away from the commemoration “out of respect and with a view to history.”
Among the party founders of the predecessor party, the FN, were a former member of the Waffen-SS and representatives of neo-fascist groups. Despite this, RN parliamentary group leader Marine Le Pen still came to the ceremony without saying a word.
During his time in office, Macron had already admitted the women’s rights activist Simone Veil, the First World War writer Maurice Genevoix and – as the first black woman and artist – the American-born singer Josephine Baker into the pantheon.
The Pantheon is a former church dedicated to St. Genevieve that was converted into a national hall of fame during the French Revolution. According to the inscription, it is dedicated to the “Great Men”.
The scientist Marie Curie and the two resistance fighters Geneviève de Gaulle-Anthonioz and Germaine Tillion were the first women to be accepted into the pantheon on their own merits.
AFP/Simone Steiner
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