Missak Manouchian (Armenian: Միսաք Մանուշեան; pronounced [misɑkʰ manuʃjɑn], 1 September 1909 – 21 February 1944) was a French-Armenian poet and communist activist.

[7] During World War II, he became the military commissioner of FTP-MOI, a group consisting of European immigrants, including many Jews,[8][9] in the Paris Region which carried out assassinations and bombings of Nazi targets.

[5][20] Manouchian wrote poetry and, with an Armenian friend who used the pseudonym of Séma (Kégham Atmadjian), founded two communist-leaning[14] literary magazines, Tchank ("Effort") and Mechagouyt ("Culture").

[citation needed] The following year, he was elected secretary of the Relief Committee for Armenia (HOC), an organization associated with the MOI (Immigrant Workforce Movement).

[citation needed] When the Second World War broke out in September 1939 Manouchian was arrested for his suspect communist ties, but was released in October and conscripted into the French 4th Specialist Training Company and dispatched to Brittany.

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.

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.

[25] 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.

"[8] Photographs of French Resistance agents facing a firing squad of Nazi officers were discovered in December 2009, and Serge Klarsfeld identified them as Manouchian and his group members.

[34] The French journalist Alexandre Adler, in a series of articles in the Socialist newspaper Le Matin, defended Holban, arguing that he was not in Paris in the fall of 1943 and thus was not in a position to know the address of Manouchian or anyone else in his group.

[35] Adler drew attention to a 1980 article in the Romanian journal Magazin istoric by the FTP-MOI intelligence chief Cristina Luca Boico, where she mentions that Holban was leading a maquis band in the Ardennes in November 1943 and had not been in Paris for some time.

[38] Following World War II, Armenians were perceived in France positively "solely in the reflective light of Missak Manouchian, who played an important role in the French anti-Nazi resistance.

Notable attendees included French President François Hollande, Armenian foreign minister Eduard Nalbandyan and prominent French-Armenian singer Charles Aznavour.

[44][45] On 13 March 2014, the Missak Manouchian Park was opened in central Yerevan, the Armenian capital, in attendance of Presidents Serzh Sargsyan and Hollande.

[56] In January 2022 a campaign was launched by Nicolas Daragon, mayor of Valence, Drôme, and Jean-Pierre Sakoun, president of Comité Laïcité République, and others to move Manouchian's ashes to the Panthéon.

Supporters included Katia Guiragossian, a great-niece of Missak and Mélinée Manouchian, sociologist Nathalie Heinich, historian Denis Peschanski, and others.

[57] It further gained the support of the mayors of Paris and Marseille Anne Hidalgo and Benoît Payan,[58][59][60][61] former French ambassador to Armenia Jonathan Lacôte,[62] and MPs from various parties.