Missak Manouchian

Missak Manouchian (classical Armenian: Միսաք Մանուշեան; pronounced [misɑkʰ manuʃjɑn], 1 September 1906 – 21 February 1944) 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 who carried out assassinations and bombings of Nazi targets. According to one author, the Manouchian group was the most active group during the French Resistance. 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 widely considered a hero of the French Resistance.

Early life

Manouchian was born on 1 September 1906 in Adıyaman, in Mamuret-ul-Aziz Vilayet, Ottoman Empire into an Armenian peasant family. His parents were killed during the Armenian Genocide of 1915, but he and his brother managed to survive. In the early 1920s he settled in an Armenian General Benevolent Union-run orphanage in Jounieh, Lebanon, then a French protectorate. He acquired education there and in 1925 moved to France.