9 replies to this topic

[NoComment]

the trailer

http://www.dailymoti...rime_shortfilms



with our great Simon Abkarian as Missak Manouchian, the leader of the Manouchian Group

[vava]

looks great!

[NoComment]

according to some french critics, Guediguian did a Great movie


The Army of Crime

Cannes Festival
http://www.festival-.../year/2009.html

some critics in english
http://www.newyorker...resistance.html

http://www.screendai...5001319.article

a mixed one
http://www.ifc.com/b...my-of-crime.php

[Louise]

[quote name='NoComment' date='May 19 2009, 03:04 PM' post='258813']
according to some french critics, Guediguian did a Great movie


The Army of Crime

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Un poème de Missak Manouchian

Je ne regrette rien

Je ne regrette rien, de ces jours enfuis
Blanc ou noirs, heureux ou douloureux
Mon cœur refoule ces anciens chants
Qui font saigner les plaies mal fermées de mon âme.

Je ne regrette rien, ni la lumière et son ivresse
Ni ce rêve étincelant de mon âme papillon
Dans le berceau parfumé de la rose.
Quand mon âme folle butinait l’Amour

Notre vie me semble éphémère et vaine
Rictus parmi d’autres de la nature impassible
Et je hausse les épaules.

Mille regrets…mille douleurs…

Je ne regrette rien
Le rêve ineffable de ce monde s’est évanoui
Je n’y puis rien
Je me heurte à l’Univers entier
Cela seul guide mes pas.

(traduit de l’arménien par Gérard Bédrossian et Jean-Pierre Crespel)

[Yervant1]

RTL.info, Belgium

Feb 18, 2024

 

 

Missak Manouchian, symbol of the “anonymous foreigners” of the Resistance Published today at 7:24 a.m.by AFP
 

 

Survivor of the Armenian genocide, stateless and communist, Missak Manouchian has become a figure of the Resistance whose entry into the Pantheon on Wednesday marks recognition of the role played by foreigners in France in the fight against Nazism.

His pantheonization "is also that of all these anonymous foreigners who died for France", estimates Katia Guiragossian, great-niece of the Armenian resistance fighter shot on February 21, 1944 at Mont-Valérien.

Died in 1989, Mélinée Manouchian will be admitted at the same time as him, as his wife, into the temple of personalities who have marked the history of the French nation.

Born on September 1, 1906 in Adiyaman (now Turkey) into a peasant family, Missak (Michel) Manouchian found himself orphaned very young, after the death of his father killed during the Armenian genocide of 1915, then of his mother swept away by famine.

Hidden by a Kurdish family, he was taken in with his brother Garabed in an orphanage in Jounieh (present-day Lebanon) where he discovered a taste for writing and learned the trade of carpenter.

 

In the mid-1920s, aboard the boat that transported him from Beirut to Marseille, Missak spoke in a long poem about the hopes his future host land inspired in him.

- Working poet -

He worked for a time at the shipyards of La Seyne-sur-Mer (Var). But he didn't like this work and went with Garabed to Paris where he was hired as a turner at the Citroën factory on Quai de Javel.

 

Tossed about by personal crisis - with the death of his brother in 1927 - by economic crisis - with the loss of his job during the Great Depression of the early 1930s - Missak took up careers while continuing to explore his artistic fiber.

“He was also interested in music, in history, he took courses at the workers' library, frequented the Sainte-Geneviève library, wrote poems... He even took screenwriting courses!” , says Katia Guiragossian.

In 1934, the young man joined the French Communist Party (PCF) and the Relief Committee for Armenia. It is there that he meets Mélinée, also an orphan survivor of the Armenian genocide.

Born Mélinée Soukémian in 1913 in Constantinople (now Istanbul), she came from a wealthy family of civil servants in the Ottoman Empire. After the death of her parents, she lived in Greece, in an orphanage in Corinth before being sent in 1926 to Marseille to continue her studies.

After training as an accountant and steno-typist, she moved to Paris. Both stateless, Missak and Mélinée have in common a full adherence to French civilization. The couple married on February 22, 1936.

Three years later, Missak Manouchian was interned as a foreign communist in a camp, then incorporated into the army. On his return in 1940 to occupied Paris, he continued his militant activity clandestinely, distributing anti-Hitler leaflets with his historian friend Arsène Tchakarian.

- “Hero” of “Red Poster” -

At the beginning of 1943, he joined the armed communist resistance group, the Francs-tireurs et partisans - immigrant workforce (FTP-MOI).

The sixty Poles, Italians or Armenians led from the summer of 1943 by Missak Manouchian carried out around a hundred actions against the occupier: sabotage, derailments, attacks on soldiers... Until their main feat of arms, September 28, 1943: the murder of SS general Julius Ritter, head of the Compulsory Labor Service (STO), rue Pétrarque in Paris.

On the morning of November 16, 1943, when Missak Manouchian had to meet the leader of the FTP-MOI in the Paris region, Joseph Epstein, at the Évry-Petit-Bourg station, the two men were arrested then tortured and imprisoned for several months .

At the end of a mock trial reported in the collaborationist press, Missak Manouchian was shot at the age of 37, with around twenty of his comrades.

Ten of them appeared on the "Red Poster" plastered in the streets by the German occupiers, who presented them as the "army of crime" led by the "gang leader" Manouchian and attributed to them "56 attacks, 150 dead, 600 injured.

“+L'Affiche rouge+ wanted to make them assassins, but made them heroes”, underlines the historian Denis Peschanski, author of the book “Foreigners in the Resistance” (ed. de l'Atelier, 2002) and scientific manager of the Missak Manouchian committee at the Pantheon.

His pantheonization makes his prediction come true: “I am sure that the French people and all the freedom fighters will know how to honor our memory with dignity,” Missak wrote in his last letter to Mélinée, a few hours before being put to death.

https://www.rtl.be/a.../article/639215 

[Yervant1]

Feb 20 2024

 

 

France to honour foreign Resistance member: who was Missak Manouchian?

Armenian-born hero was executed only months before liberation. He will be first ‘official’ communist to be interred in the Panthéon

 

 

A mural of Manouchian, and the Panthéon where he will be interred with his wife Pic: OKcamera / Shutterstock / Abaca Press / Alamy Stock Photo

By Zane Lilley

France will add its 82nd person to the Panthéon tomorrow (February 21), a hero of the French Resistance movement during World War Two who was executed shortly before liberation.

Armenian-born Missak Manouchian will be interred in the building, alongside his wife Mélinée, becoming only the seventh non-French born person given the honour.

The Manouchians will be the first people interred in the Panthéon since Joséphine Baker in 2021 (although her remains are still in Monaco).

President Emmanuel Macron will lead the ceremony, which will also see 23 of Mr Manouchian’s Resistance member comrades who were executed alongside him ‘symbolically’ represented in the chamber for their actions during World War Two.

Although not as well known as some of the other Resistance members such as Jean Moulin, Manouchian was a dedicated guerilla fighter in Paris throughout the war, and has been memorialised in songs and poems. 

Survivor of the Armenian genocide 

Manouchian was born in 1906 to Armenian parents, in what was then the Ottoman Empire. His parents died in the Armenian genocide, after which he was orphaned in Lebanon. 

As this was a French protectorate at the time, Manouchian was able to eventually move to Paris, where he worked both as a model for sculptors and as a factory worker in a Citroën plant.

He became a member of his local trade union, and then a member of the French Communist Party in the 1930s – this means he will be the first ‘official’ Communist to be memorialised in the Panthéon. 

Brave Resistance member

As a foreigner, Manouchian could not join the army and was evacuated from the Paris area in 1939, settling in Normandy, but quickly after the occupation he joined the local Resistance movement. 

He was arrested in a round-up of ‘anti-communist’ members of society by the German soldiers, but through his wife Mélinée secured a release, and he immediately returned to Resistance activities.

Originally, led the Armenian section of the underground Resistance.

France had seen a large influx of Armenians after the genocide, and Manouchian was friends with the Aznavour family – which included the future singer Charles Aznavour – who were part of his group.

He later became a gunman and saboteur attached to the FTP (Francs-tireurs et partisans), the Resistance movement led by the Communist Party, carrying out activities in Paris.

His group was known for many high-profile sabotages and assassinations, but eventually an informer gave away information about the group, leading to Manouchian’s arrest in 1943.

Manouchian and 23 others under his command – those who will also be symbolically memorialised in the Panthéon – were subject to months of torture, before being assassinated on February 21, 1944, exactly 80 years before tomorrow’s ceremony. 

‘I forgive everyone’ 

Manouchian missed the beginning of French liberation by just a few months, but his efforts have been remembered, particularly by those from foreign backgrounds. 

The positive perception of the Armenian diaspora by the French in the latter half of the 20th century was in part due to Manouchian’s actions during the Resistance, some historians have argued.

He is also well known for his poignant last letter to his wife written just before his execution.

A particular section reads:

“I wish for happiness for all those who will survive and taste the sweetness of the freedom and peace of tomorrow… At the moment of death, I proclaim that I have no hatred for the German people, or for anyone at all… The German people, and all other people, will live in peace and brotherhood after the war, which will not last much longer. Happiness for all.” 

He also implored his wife to remarry and have a child, as it was his 'greatest regret' that he was unable to be a father to her children. She remained unmarried for the rest of her life, however.

The letter inspired a poem by Louis Aragon (Strophes pour se souvenir) alongside a song by French singer Léo Ferré (L’affiche Rouge) with both use excerpts of the letter. 

A film released about Manouchian and his group sparked a fierce historical debate over the traitor who handed him over to the German soldiers, but later analysis of police records confirmed it was not a politician but a member of the group who was captured and tortured.

https://www.connexio...ssak-Manouchian

[MosJan]

https://armday.am/po...3oug9u0vpjRqqUE

 

 

Ֆրանսիայի Պանթեոնում տեղի է ունենում Միսաք Մանուշյանի աճյունի ամփոփման արարողությունը․

 

 

 

[MosJan]

[MosJan]

France issues stamps dedicated to Charles Aznavour and Missak Manouchian

 

 

French Philaposte has published a collection of four stamps dedicated to Resistance Hero Missak Manouchian and legendary singer Charles Aznavour.

The stamps were presented on Tuesday in the presence of Armenian Ambassador to France Hasmik Tolmajian, Senate Vice-President Pierre Ouzoulias and Brice Roquefeuil, Director for Continental Europe at the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs, Charles Aznavour’s son Micha Aznavour and Missak Manouchian’s great-niece Katia Guiragossian.

 

 

[MosJan]

https://en.armradio....sak-manouchian/