1. Missak Manouchian is considered a hero of the French Resistance and was entombed in the Pantheon in Paris.
16 Facts About Missak Manouchian
1. 2.
Missak Manouchian 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.
3.
Missak Manouchian's parents were killed during the Armenian genocide of 1915, but he and his brother managed to survive.
4.
Missak Manouchian acquired education there and in 1925 moved to France.
5.
Missak Manouchian joined the General Confederation of Labour, a national association of trade unions which was the first of the five major French confederations.
6.
Missak Manouchian wrote poetry and, with an Armenian friend who used the pseudonym of Sema, founded two communist-leaning literary magazines, Tchank and Mechagouyt.
7.
Missak Manouchian became the political chief of the Armenian section of the underground MOI, but little is known about his activities until 1943.
8.
Missak Manouchian assumed command of three detachments, totaling about 50 fighters.
9.
The Missak Manouchian group is credited with the assassination on 28 September 1943, of General Julius Ritter, the assistant in France to Fritz Sauckel, responsible for the mobilization and deportation of labor under the German STO in Nazi-occupied Europe.
10.
L'Affaire Missak Manouchian was finally settled in the 1990s when French police records were opened, revealing that Joseph Davidowicz, a resistance fighter who was arrested and then released by the Gestapo, was the informer who betrayed Missak Manouchian.
11.
In 2007, an exhibition dedicated to Missak Manouchian was held at the Musee Jean Moulin in Paris in the scope of the Year of Armenia in France.
12.
On 13 March 2014, the Missak Manouchian Park was opened in central Yerevan, the Armenian capital, in attendance of Presidents Serzh Sargsyan and Hollande.
13.
On 5 March 1955, a street named for the Missak Manouchian Group was dedicated in the 20th arrondissement of Paris.
14.
In 1978, a statue of Missak Manouchian sculpted by Ara Harutyunyan was opened in the military cemetery of Ivry-sur-Seine, Paris.
15.
In February 2010, busts of Missak Manouchian were inaugurated in Marseille, in a square named after him, and in Issy-les-Moulineaux.
16.
Missak Manouchian became the first communist to enter the Pantheon.