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Mélinée, Missak and their comrades: fighters Communists, internationalists, revolutionaries, anti -fascists.
N° 861 21/02/2024
February 21, 1944 were shot in Mont-Valérien twenty-and-three
fighters immigrants from resistant networks "FTP-Moi" including their leader, the
Communist Missak Manouchian, of Armenian origin.
A solemn tribute will be paid to him on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of his execution.
He will be buried in the Pantheon with his Mélinée wife. A plaque will also be affixed to honor their comrades.
Isolate
Missak and Mélinée Manouchian is to deny their membership of a group
essentially communist fighters who was fighting against Nazism
And the collaborationist government of Pétain is a betrayal and
an insult.
A communist commitment
.
In
Asking in 1933 his naturalization which will remain without follow -up, Missak
Manouchian shows his
attachment to France, he will renew his
request for naturalization in 1940 which was refused again.
Missak
Manouchian, Armenian poet and resistant, was born 1906 in a family
Armenian peasants in Türkiye. His family dies in the genocide
Armenian
[1]
perpetrated by Turkey. He arrived in France in 1924 at the age of 9.
He
exercises a carpenter profession in Marseille, then is hired as
Tourner at Citroën factories in Paris. Passionate about literature
Armenian and French, he frequented libraries, takes courses
as a free listener at the Sorbonne and founded in 1930 a review in Armenian
Tchank
(In Armenian: ջանք, literally "effort"), his publication ceased in June 1931 after 12 issues.
Missak
Manouchian joined the Communist Party the day after the demonstration
antiplacing on February 6, 1934, led by the extreme leagues
RIGHT
[2]
.
He also joined the French section of the rescue committee of
Armenia, an organization linked to the Communist International aimed at
Mobilize the Armenian diaspora in favor of the Soviet Republic
Armenia.
HAS
The declaration of war in 1939 Missak Manouchian was arrested and
Imprisoned but released for lack of charge and will live in hiding.
His state status and communist commitment (the Communist Party
will be dissolved a few weeks later) place in the category of
"Unwanted" that the Daladier government wants to see.
He
was interned at the end of June 1941 at the Royallieu camp in Compiègne by the
Germans who then carry out preventive arrests in
Communist environments, in the context of the Barbarossa operation
[4]
.
Released for lack of charges, Missak Manouchian resumes his activity
activist and integrates the immigrant labor (me), a structure created by
the Communist Party to supervise immigrants and refugees arrived
In France at the end of the First World War. He becomes the
Political Manager of the Armenian section between the end of 1941 and the
At the beginning of 1942 under the pseudonym of
« Georges »
.
Combatants in busy Paris
In
February 1943, he was paid in the clandestine organization
Small and supporters-migrant work (FTP-MOI-BRANCHE
military of the self), then the only group resisting to carry out actions
armed against the occupier in Paris. He participated in his first
armed action on March 17, 1943 in Levallois-Perret by attacking the
Granada a group of German soldiers. He is appointed commissioner
soldier of the Paris region in August 1943, having under his orders
About fifty activists. Groups under his command lead
Thirty armed operations in August in mid-November 1943,
whose execution on September 28 of the German general Julius Ritter,
responsible in France for the requisition of labor within the framework
compulsory labor service (STO).
THE
reprisals are deadly (fifty hostages shot on October 5
At Mont-Valérien), the response of the resistance fighters is just as much: 15
Attached causing large losses to the Germans.
Missak Manouchian was arrested in the Paris region on November 16, 1943 by the special French police brigades
(3)
After a long spin, when he had an appointment with the chief
Interregional of FTP Joseph Epstein. In the days that follow, the
FTP-Me groups are massively arrested and delivered to the Germans.
They are tortured, none speak to protect their comrades.
From his prison in Fresnes, February 21, 1944 Manouchian wrote to his wife:
" All
is confused in me and very clear at the same time. I was committed to
the Liberation Army as a volunteer soldier and I die on the verge of
Victory and goal. Happiness to those who will survive us and taste
The sweetness of the freedom and peace of tomorrow. I'm sure the
French people and all fighters of freedom will honor
our memory with dignity. When I die, I proclaim that I did not
no hatred against the German people and against anyone, everyone
will have what he deserves as punishment and a reward. The people
German and all other peoples will live in peace and fraternity
After the war that will not last longer. Happiness to all .... I
died with my 23 comrades earlier with courage and
serenity of a man who has a very peaceful conscience, because
Personally, I did not hurt anyone and if I did it, I
did it without hatred.
Farewell. Your friend, your comrade your husband
[5]
. Manouchian »
Missak Manouchian will be shot at Mont Valérien, with twenty-one of his
comrades, a hill where more than a thousand resistance fighters are executed
and hostages during the occupation.
The red poster
Follows
a propaganda campaign orchestrated by the Nazis, discrediting the
band. Leaflets stressing their status as foreigners or Jews are
distributed. Then a red poster calling them as
"Crime Army"
is placked nearly 15,000 copies in the streets of Paris and in several large cities.
A
poster showing a staging in which Manouchian is
Presented as the gang leader of foreign terrorists. She wanted
Inspire the horror of their cause and the repulsion of their origins.
She was going to turn against the executioners.
We know what we owe the 23 shot of the red poster and to Olga Bancic, beheaded in Germany.
52 of them died under the tortures of the Nazis, 50 % died in combat.
These
combatants were internationalists, revolutionaries, anti -fascists
their ashes are not to be mixed with those of the Napoleonic soldiers,
any more than those of the capitalists who have grown the cohort of
collaborationists.
Assign to their life an alleged fight for the
"French homeland"
is a deception: Manouchian, Grzywacz, Elek, Wajsbrot, Witchitz,
Fingerweig, Boczov, Fontano, Alfonso, Rajman and Olga Bancic are in
our hearts like
resistance fighters, at the forefront of
communist resistance, spearhead of fights for the release of
France of the occupier and the anti -fascist victory against Nazism.
They led urban guerrilla warfare to France against the Nazi occupier.
Recall
The heroic life of these foreigners is despicable at the very moment when Macron
and his government voted one of the worst xenophobic laws, borrowed
On the RN and LR program on immigration and where in Mayotte the law
of the soil is called into question; It's a shame !
Macron makes the bed of the far right by constituting a
"Republican front"
From RN to PS during the tribute to the victims of October 7, 2023.
He
wants to hide infamous political practices, by associating
anti -fascists and the RN of Marine Le Pen while this party plunges its
roots in the National Front founded by employees and support
of the Vichy regime. Everything fought by FTP-Moi
[6]
.
He
wants to erase that the 23 ftp-me fighters shot this morning
winter, just like their comrade Olga Bancic were members of the party
communist, the one who paid the heaviest tribute in combat against
Nazi occupation, "
firing
».
Those
who govern us are accomplices today of the genocide in Gaza and this
It is not with these ceremonies that they will be able to divert us from
sense of FTP me, as well as the sense of battle of resistance fighters
Palestinians against the colonizing state of Israel. It is only a
contemptuous little Macron electoral maneuver, to try to
recover the vote of the French of Armenian origin who form a
diaspora of more than 600,000 members
[7]
.
Their
combat is part of our anti -racist, anti -fascist and
today's anti -colonialists. This is an example to shoot down the
Capitalism, building socialism to change.
[1]
. Whose assessment rises to almost a million and a half dead.
[2]
. In February 1934 Missak Manouchian demonstrated against the far-right leagues.
[3]
The French services of the prefecture of police, - who employ it
nearly 130 inspectors, general information in mind - accentuate
their hunt
[4]
.
Under the code name "Operation Barbarossa", Nazi Germany invades
The Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. It was the biggest operation
German military of the Second World War.
[5]
. Mélinée Manouchian Paris, February 21, 1944.
HAS
My beloved, Missak I just learned the terrible news that goes
To separate us forever, this injustice from men I cannot accept it.
For you I will remain strong, I will transmit your values, our values,
your fights to the following generations so that a woman never again
Do not have to write these words to her husband. I want to tell you about my
so deep and powerful feelings about you, one last
times ... I'm not going to be mourning, I will be worthy for you as you
AS been all your life, we have gone through so many trials together,
Today you are going to die for your country, as a man of glory. You can not
not know how proud you are of you, my little poet of me, my
hero! Mine, but also that of your next, of France. You are
The most courageous person I know, none would be able
to sacrifice themselves for their country as you do. The jealous will say that
You are not really French, and yet for them, for freedom, you
you sacrificed. I am sure that you are the most French of everyone and
Name of our France, our land of asylum, I thank you. You are 37 years old,
You could have had all your life in front of you, but today you are going
Dying and our projects with you will disappear. You will leave the
barbarism of this world, and I hope that your death will be able to bring peace. I
am slaughtered, today I do not only lose my husband, I lose
half of me. They will kill me for the first time before life
does just as much a second. Anger takes place in
my little body, they tear our freedom and our heroes from the
daily. You taught me to stay strong, and I
will respect my promise so important for you. My Missak, my darling,
You are the most incredible person, courageous, devoted,
attentive, beautiful, strong, calm, tireless, loyal, sensitive, delicate,
human and true. All women claim that their husbands are the
better and with the greatest sincerity I will tell them not, but
You, Missak Manouchian, you are. I trust you, I know you
You were beaten for our freedoms, to no longer have to undergo the violence of
Men and to offer me a better world you give up your life. Never
I could not have hoped for a man like you, I am so lucky to
Having known you, for having lived in your company, even if it was too short.
I still need you, don't leave me on my own, my husband. You
made me want to live and without you survive it is difficult for me to
Imagine but for you I will do it. You ask me to rebuild my life
With another, build a family. But how could I, you
Is my life, my man, my past, you were my future, my future. I do not
don't want you to be disappointed, but I want to be honest with you when
Where I write these words to you, I cannot imagine another life without you.
Time may dry up my tears, but I doubt it. This freedom
that you grant me to love another, grant the me to love only
You. Your melinée, with you forever, my Missak to me.
[6]
. In February 1934 Missak Manouchian demonstrated against the far-right leagues.
[7]
.THE
French of Armenian origin form a diaspora of more than 600,000
members. It was formed in the in-between war of the century
last and benefited from successive waves of immigration which have it
conducted to develop in a multifaceted way. Even today this
diaspora sees many families coming directly from
Syria, Armenia and Artsakh. For several decades, the CCAF
Coordination advice for Armenian Armenian of France succeeded in
make the voice of the French of Armenian origin heard with
authorities. It notably organizes an annual dinner to which
participate the President of the Republic
Communists!