Off and on, the Ottoman Empire persecuted Armenians. Many of the victims sought greener fields outside the empire. Wherever they went, the emigres stayed in touch with other emigres and with their families at home. In 1905, some of them established the Armenian General Benevolent Union. The AGBU raised money to send seeds and farm equipment to Armenians still inside the Empire. Then came the Ottoman Empire’s terrible genocide of the Armenians. The AGBU provided much humanitarian aid at the time, but then also established orphanages to care for the hordes of children who had lost their parents. Later, they paid for the higher education of talented Armenian orphans.
Missak Manouchian (1909-1944) benefitted from the help of the AGBU. He lost his parents in the genocide (must have been about 6 years old), grew up in an orphanage in French-ruled Lebanon, and went to France (1925) in search of work. Eventually, he became a lathe-operator at Citroen near Paris. Naturally, he joined the Confederation General du Travail (CGT), a trades union group. He lost that job when the Depression hit France in the early Thirties. Disappointed, like almost everyone else, in capitalism and parliamentary democracy, he joined the French Communist Party in 1934.
He also had literary and intellectual aspirations. From 1935 to 1937, the Party put him to editing an Armenian-language literary magazine, and working on a Party-inspired Relief Committee for Armenia.
The Hitler-Stalin Pact (August 1939) led the French government to ban the Communist Party when war broke out a few days later. Manouchian was one among many communists who were arrested. Like others, he was then released for military service. Assigned to a unit remote from the front lines, Manouchian was discharged after Germany defeated France in Summer 1940. He went back to Paris; got arrested by the Germans; got released. Then there is a gap in what is known of his life. After Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Communist Party went to war in a serious way. Manouchian seems not to have been involved or involved much in any Resistance work. The most likely thing is that he did some writing for clandestine newspapers.
Things changed in February 1943. Boris Milev, a Bulgarian Communist living in France, recruited Manouchian for the group being led by Boris Holban.[1] In Summer 1943, Manouchian replaced Holban as head of the group. In September 1943, Manouchian ordered a team to kill an SS General in Paris. They did and Heinrich Himmler demanded action. He got it. Holban had worried that the group’s many young men were careless about security. He had wanted to back off for a while and increase security. He had been right. The Vichy police had already identified some of the group, who led them to many others. The French arrested 22 members of the group in November 1943. They were turned over to the Germans, tried and executed in February 1944.
Much later, an ugly quarrel over responsibility took place in the media.[2]
Resistance movements were (and are) vulnerable. They attracted enthusiasts who often were not suited by maturity or temperament or life experience to secret work. Security services often have the bulge in all these areas, along with superior resources. It can be a martyr’s game.
[2] See: Affiche Rouge – Wikipedia and Missak Manouchian – Wikipedia. These people deserved better.
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