A vigil was organized Tuesday evening at Mont Valérien. Eighty years to the day after his execution, communist resistance fighter and immigrant Missak Manouchian will enter the Pantheon this Wednesday.
“Happiness to those who will survive us and taste the sweetness of the Freedom and Peace of tomorrow. I am sure that the French people and all the Freedom fighters will know how to honor our memory with dignity” wrote Missak Manouchian in the last letter to his wifeMélinée, on the day of his death, February 21, 1944. Eighty years later, the Armenian communist resistance fighter will enter the French Pantheon.
The ceremony takes place this Wednesday, February 21 while Tuesday evening, a vigil was organized at Mont Valérien. Several hundred people traveled for the occasion to Suresnes, in Hauts-de-Seine. Patricia Mirallès, the Secretary of State for Veterans and Memory, chaired this first tribute to the resistance fighter.
This Wednesday, after spending the night in the crypt of the Combatant France memorial, at Mont-Valérien, the coffin of Missak Manouchian will join the Pantheon at the end of the day. Before that, all French people will also be able to pay tribute to the figure of the French Resistance during a popular tribute organized in Paris, on the afternoon of February 21, by the French Communist Party and the CGT union. During this ceremony, Fabien Roussel and Sophie Binet will speak to honor the memory of Missak Manouchian.
Organized by the Elysée, the pantheonization ceremony of Missak Manouchian must pay tribute to the military leader of the Francs-tireurs et partisans – Immigrant workforce (FTP-MOI) of the French Internal Resistance. With the entry into the Resistance Pantheon, the entire “Manouchian Group” is honored more than eight decades after the execution of the man and 22 of his comrades by Nazi troops on Mont-Valérien. Missak Manouchian was then 37 years old.
More than an hour of ceremony between tributes and poetry
The entry of Missak and Mélinée Manouchian into the Panthéon will take place at nightfall and under the colors of the French flag, on Wednesday February 21. The coffin of the communist resistance fighter, dressed in the tricolor flag and carried by a regiment “linked to Manouchian”, will advance down rue Soufflot from 6:30 p.m., the Elysée indicated. The path to the Pantheon will be paved with blue, white and red lights and must represent three major moments in the life of Missak Manouchian: her survival of the Armenian genocide of 1915, her arrival in France in 1924 and her participation in the French Resistance from 1940.
A seven-minute sound and light show will be performed on the Place du Panthéon before the Manouchian couple enters the monument. Inside, a funeral oration will be delivered by Emmanuel Macron in front of 1,200 guests, including 150 journalists and 600 students who studied the resistance’s journey. Among the guests, several will be of Armenian nationality. The Armenian Prime Minister, Nikol Pashinian, has also been invited and will be present.
During the one and a half hour ceremony, which will be broadcast live on certain television channels, the poem by Louis Aragon Stanzas to remember, sung by Léo Ferré will be covered and reinterpreted by Arthur Tréboul, the singer of the group Feu! Chatterton, reports theHumanity. The text is inspired by a few passages from Missak Manouchian’s last letter to his wife Mélinée. At the end of the tribute, around 8 p.m., the Manouchian couple will return to vault XIII in the crypt of the Pantheon alongside another resistance fighter, Joséphine Baker. At the entrance to the vault, a plaque will pay tribute to the couple as well as to the 22 other executed resistance fighters.
The National Rally present?
Three days before the pantheonization of Missak Manouchian, Emmanuel Macron suggested in the columns ofHumanity that the presence of the National Rally at the ceremony was not desirable. According to him, “the far-right forces would be advised not to be present, given the nature of Manouchian’s fight.” A position adhered to by the head of the French Communist Party Fabien Roussel for whom the RN “would indeed be inspired not to come and pay homage to those whose ancestors, in history, contributed to their being shot” a- it indicated on RTLin reference to the denialist declarations of Jean-Marie Le Pen, which were definitively condemned in 2018. The politician’s comments comparing the gas chambers to a “detail of history” had been condemned by Marine Le Pen and had led to the exclusion of Jean-Marie Le Pen from the party.
Marine Le Pen confirmed through her entourage that she will be present at the ceremony “despite the outrageous remarks of the President of the Republic”. Information confirmed by the president of the committee for entry into the Resistance Pantheon, Jean-Pierre Sakoun. This news is “not the greatest of our pleasures” he conceded to theAFP while saying “respect[er] the institutions”.