Missak Manouchian

Missak Manouchian (1906 – 1944) was an Armenian poet and French Resistance commander. An orphan who survived the 1915 Armenian Genocide, Manouchian arrived in France as a refugee in 1924, working in the Citroën car factories in Paris while publishing Armenian literary journals.

During the Nazi occupation, Manouchian joined the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans – Main-d'Œuvre Immigrée (FTP-MOI), commanding fifty-five underground foreign fighters—Jewish, Armenian, Polish, Italian, and Spanish immigrants. Under his leadership, the group carried out nearly thirty armed attacks in Paris, notably assassinating SS-General Julius Ritter, overseer of the forced labor draft. Betrayed in November 1943, the group was subjected to a Nazi propaganda show-trial; the infamous red poster (*L'Affiche Rouge*) displayed their photos to portray them as foreign criminals. Manouchian and twenty-one comrades were executed by firing squad at Mont-Valérien on February 21, 1944. He entered the Panthéon in 2024.