Armenians in France
Others came through the second half of the 20th century, fleeing political and economic instability in the Middle Eastern countries (Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and Iran) and, more recently, from Armenia.
[10] The Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, located on the north-eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, became of strategic importance to the crusaders en route to Palestine.
He was later released and transferred to France where he died in 1393 and was buried at the Basilica of St Denis, the burial place of the French monarchs.
[12] Jean Althen (Hovhannès Althounian), a Persian-Armenian agronomist from Nakhchivan, is known to have introduced madder to southern France in the 1750s.
[24][25] In the 19th century, many young Armenian males (among them poet and political activist Nahapet Rusinian and architect Nigoğayos Balyan) moved to France for education.
He visited Turkish Armenia and found out that the Armenians use benzoin resin and plant sap to disinfect their homes and churches.
He had formed a "peaceful, reconstructive policy" with the Turkish nationalists to pull French troops out of Cilicia, but all that ended up doing was allowing attacks against Armenian civilians to resume.
[28] Most Cilician Armenian fled alongside the French and were resettled in refugee camps in Alexandretta, Aleppo, the Beqaa Valley (e.g. Anjar) and Beirut.
[30] Most Armenians initially arrived in Marseille, thereafter many of them spread across France and settled in large cities, especially in Paris and the urban areas across the Paris–Marseille railway, notably Lyon.
In the Interwar period, the majority of Armenians in France were unskilled villagers that mostly worked in factories for low wages.
[31] In this period, a number of Turkish Armenian intellectuals moved to France, including Arshag Chobanian (1895),[32] Komitas (1919, transferred to a hospital in Paris where he remained until his death),[33] Levon Pashalian (1920),[34] Shahan Shahnour (1923).
Resisters Alexander Kazarian and Bardukh Petrosian were awarded by the highest military orders of France by General Charles de Gaulle.
[36] Another Resistance fighter, Louise Aslanian, a famous writer and poet, was a recruiter for the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans in a combat cell of the French Communist Party.
She along with her husband Arpiar Aslanian worked in an underground publishing house and actively engaged in supplying fighters of the French Resistance with weapons.
Henri Karayan, a member of the Manouchian Group, participated in the illegal distribution of Humanité in Paris and was engaged in the armed struggle until the Libération.
[37] In 2012, 95-year-old Arsène Tchakarian, the last survivor of the Manouchian resistance group who fought against occupying Nazi German forces during World War II, was decorated as Officer of the Legion of Honor by President Nicolas Sarkozy.
[40] The campaign to pass the resolution condemning the Armenian genocide at the European Council unleashed on June 19, 1987, at a Strasbourg demonstration.
[55] Today, Armenian classes are organized in many localities with full bilingual kindergartens and primary schools near Paris and Marseille attended by several thousand children and youths.
[62] According to a 1996 survey in France, 69% of respondents were aware of the Armenian genocide, of which 75% agreed that the French government should officially recognize it.
