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Missak Manouchian
Missak Manouchian (Armenian: Միսաք Մանուշեան; pronounced [misɑkʰ manuʃjɑn], 1 September 1909 – 21 February 1944) was an Armenian poet and communist activist. A survivor of the 1915–1916 Armenian genocide, he moved to France from an orphanage in Lebanon in 1925. He was active in communist Armenian literary circles. During World War II, he became the military commissioner of FTP-MOI, a group consisting of European immigrants, including many Jews, in the Paris Region which carried out assassinations and bombings of Nazi targets. According to one author, the Manouchian group was the most active one of the French Resistance. Manouchian and many of his comrades were arrested in November 1943 and executed by the Nazis at Fort Mont-Valérien on 21 February 1944. He is considered a hero of the French Resistance and was entombed in the Panthéon in Paris.
Manouchian is registered as being born on 1 September 1906 in Adıyaman, in Mamuret-ul-Aziz Vilayet, Ottoman Empire into an Armenian peasant family. It was discovered in February 2024 that he was in fact born in 1909, when pages from his notebooks, discovered in May 2023 by his family at the Charents Museum of Literature and Arts, were obtained at the last minute for the exhibition celebrating his transfer to the Panthéon, and exhibited although not yet exploited by French researchers, as they were written in Armenian: his great-grandniece Hasmik Manouchian read in an entry dated February 1935 that he was 25. She said that this corroborated family stories that he had made himself older by three years, as he was not 18 when he arrived in France, but 15, too young to be allowed to work. The historian Denis Peschanski, who curated the exhibition, pointed out that this was relatively common for immigrants to France at the time. His tomb at the Panthéon, installed a short time before, is engraved with the date 1906.
His parents were killed during the Armenian genocide of 1915, but he and his brother managed to survive. In the early 1920s he settled in an Armenian General Benevolent Union-run orphanage in Jounieh, Lebanon, then a French protectorate. He acquired education there and in 1925 moved to France.
Eventually, Manouchian settled in Paris, where he took a job as a lathe operator at a Citroën plant. During this period he was self-educated and often visited libraries in the Latin Quarter. He joined the General Confederation of Labour (Confédération Générale du Travail, CGT), a national association of trade unions which was the first of the five major French confederations. In the early 1930s, when the world-wide economic crisis of the Great Depression set in, Missak Manouchian lost his job. Disaffected with capitalism, he began earning a meager living by posing as a model for sculptors.[citation needed]
In 1934, Manouchian joined the French Communist Party. From 1935 to 1937 he edited the Armenian-language left-wing weekly newspaper Zangou, named after a river in Armenia. The newspaper was anti-fascist, anti-Dashnak, anti-imperialist and pro-Soviet.
Manouchian wrote poetry and, with an Armenian friend who used the pseudonym of Séma (Kégham Atmadjian), founded two communist-leaning literary magazines, Tchank ("Effort") and Mechagouyt ("Culture"). They published articles on French literature and Armenian culture. The two young men translated the poetry of Baudelaire, Verlaine, and Rimbaud into Armenian, making many of these works available in Armenian for the first time. Both Manouchian and Séma enrolled at the Sorbonne to follow courses in literature, philosophy, economics, and history.[citation needed]
The following year, he was elected secretary of the Relief Committee for Armenia (HOC), an organization associated with the MOI (Immigrant Workforce Movement). At a meeting of the HOC in 1935, he met Mélinée Assadourian, who became his companion and, later, his wife.[citation needed]
When the Second World War broke out in September 1939 Manouchian was arrested for his suspect communist ties, but was released in October and conscripted into the French 4th Specialist Training Company and dispatched to Brittany. After the defeat of June 1940, he returned to Paris to find that his militant activities had become illegal. (French authorities had banned the Communist Party as early as September 1939.) On 22 June 1941, when the invasion of the Soviet Union by the Nazis began, Manouchian was arrested by the occupying Germans in an anti-communist round-up in Paris. Interned in a prison camp at Compiègne, he was released after a few weeks without being charged, thanks to the efforts of his wife, Mélinée Assadourian.
Missak Manouchian
Missak Manouchian (Armenian: Միսաք Մանուշեան; pronounced [misɑkʰ manuʃjɑn], 1 September 1909 – 21 February 1944) was an Armenian poet and communist activist. A survivor of the 1915–1916 Armenian genocide, he moved to France from an orphanage in Lebanon in 1925. He was active in communist Armenian literary circles. During World War II, he became the military commissioner of FTP-MOI, a group consisting of European immigrants, including many Jews, in the Paris Region which carried out assassinations and bombings of Nazi targets. According to one author, the Manouchian group was the most active one of the French Resistance. Manouchian and many of his comrades were arrested in November 1943 and executed by the Nazis at Fort Mont-Valérien on 21 February 1944. He is considered a hero of the French Resistance and was entombed in the Panthéon in Paris.
Manouchian is registered as being born on 1 September 1906 in Adıyaman, in Mamuret-ul-Aziz Vilayet, Ottoman Empire into an Armenian peasant family. It was discovered in February 2024 that he was in fact born in 1909, when pages from his notebooks, discovered in May 2023 by his family at the Charents Museum of Literature and Arts, were obtained at the last minute for the exhibition celebrating his transfer to the Panthéon, and exhibited although not yet exploited by French researchers, as they were written in Armenian: his great-grandniece Hasmik Manouchian read in an entry dated February 1935 that he was 25. She said that this corroborated family stories that he had made himself older by three years, as he was not 18 when he arrived in France, but 15, too young to be allowed to work. The historian Denis Peschanski, who curated the exhibition, pointed out that this was relatively common for immigrants to France at the time. His tomb at the Panthéon, installed a short time before, is engraved with the date 1906.
His parents were killed during the Armenian genocide of 1915, but he and his brother managed to survive. In the early 1920s he settled in an Armenian General Benevolent Union-run orphanage in Jounieh, Lebanon, then a French protectorate. He acquired education there and in 1925 moved to France.
Eventually, Manouchian settled in Paris, where he took a job as a lathe operator at a Citroën plant. During this period he was self-educated and often visited libraries in the Latin Quarter. He joined the General Confederation of Labour (Confédération Générale du Travail, CGT), a national association of trade unions which was the first of the five major French confederations. In the early 1930s, when the world-wide economic crisis of the Great Depression set in, Missak Manouchian lost his job. Disaffected with capitalism, he began earning a meager living by posing as a model for sculptors.[citation needed]
In 1934, Manouchian joined the French Communist Party. From 1935 to 1937 he edited the Armenian-language left-wing weekly newspaper Zangou, named after a river in Armenia. The newspaper was anti-fascist, anti-Dashnak, anti-imperialist and pro-Soviet.
Manouchian wrote poetry and, with an Armenian friend who used the pseudonym of Séma (Kégham Atmadjian), founded two communist-leaning literary magazines, Tchank ("Effort") and Mechagouyt ("Culture"). They published articles on French literature and Armenian culture. The two young men translated the poetry of Baudelaire, Verlaine, and Rimbaud into Armenian, making many of these works available in Armenian for the first time. Both Manouchian and Séma enrolled at the Sorbonne to follow courses in literature, philosophy, economics, and history.[citation needed]
The following year, he was elected secretary of the Relief Committee for Armenia (HOC), an organization associated with the MOI (Immigrant Workforce Movement). At a meeting of the HOC in 1935, he met Mélinée Assadourian, who became his companion and, later, his wife.[citation needed]
When the Second World War broke out in September 1939 Manouchian was arrested for his suspect communist ties, but was released in October and conscripted into the French 4th Specialist Training Company and dispatched to Brittany. After the defeat of June 1940, he returned to Paris to find that his militant activities had become illegal. (French authorities had banned the Communist Party as early as September 1939.) On 22 June 1941, when the invasion of the Soviet Union by the Nazis began, Manouchian was arrested by the occupying Germans in an anti-communist round-up in Paris. Interned in a prison camp at Compiègne, he was released after a few weeks without being charged, thanks to the efforts of his wife, Mélinée Assadourian.
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