page_title: Missak Manouchian
section_title: World War II
hierarchical_section_title: Missak Manouchian / World War II
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. This description has been identified as biased or incorrect: characterization as terroristDer rote Maquis in Frankreich Ein in Gefangenschaft geratener französischer Terrorist. Foto. Kriegsberichter Theobald Information added by Wikimedia users.*Français&#160;: Voir l'article sur l'Affiche rouge. L'image montre Missak Manouchian, chef du groupe de résistants qui porte son nom. English: See the article on the Affiche rouge. The image shows Missak Manouchian.
context_page_description: Missak Manouchian was a French-Armenian poet and communist activist. An Armenian Genocide survivor, 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 French Resistance group. Manouchian and many of his comrades were arrested in November 1943 and executed by the Nazis in Fort Mont-Valérien on 21 February 1944. He is considered a hero of the French Resistance.
context_section_description: When the Second World War broke out in September 1939 Manouchian, as a foreigner, was evacuated from Paris. He found work in the Rouen area, again as a lathe-operator.  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, by the efforts of his wife Mélinée Assadourian, he was released after a few weeks without being charged.
  Manouchian became the political chief of the Armenian section of the underground MOI, but little is known about his activities until 1943. In February of that year, Manouchian transferred to the FTP-MOI, a group of gunmen and saboteurs attached to the MOI in Paris.
  Manouchian became the leader of the FTP-MOI in June/August 1943, replacing Boris Holban (ro). Manouchian assumed command of three detachments, totaling about 50 fighters. The 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 (Obligatory Work Service) in Nazi-occupied Europe. (The attack was made by the partisans Marcel Rayman, Léo Kneller, and Celestino Alfonso.) The Manouchian groups carried out almost thirty successful attacks on German interests from August to November 1943. Charles Aznavour and his family were members of the Manouchian resistance group, and were recognized after the war for rescuing Jews and Armenians from Nazi persecution.
caption: Portrait kept in the German Federal Archives and reproduced on the Affiche Rouge.
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