Missak, Mélinée, and the Manouchian Group: The Executed of the Red Poster

Description

"My dear Mélinée, my beloved little orphan.

In a few hours, I will no longer be in this world. We are going to be shot this afternoon at 3 p.m. It happens to me like an accident in my life, I don't believe it but yet, I know I will never see you again. What can I write to you? Everything is confused in me and yet very clear at the same time.

I enlisted in the Liberation Army as a volunteer soldier and I die within reach of victory and the goal. Happiness to those who will survive us and taste the sweetness of freedom and peace tomorrow."

This is the beginning of the last letter written by Missak Manouchian, a survivor of the Armenian genocide who became one of the most famous resistance fighters in France. Never naturalized, he is the first foreign resistor to enter the Pantheon, accompanied by Mélinée, his partner. Both represent the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans de la Main-d'OEuvre Immigrée, who fought to liberate France.

The Red Poster, a tool of German propaganda that sought to portray them as the "army of crime," failed in its objectives. The 23 men who were shot on February 23, 1944, and Golda Bancic, guillotined on May 10, 1944, have become heroes.

This is their story.