He will enter the Pantheon this Wednesday but his name adorns very few French streets.
Élancourt (Yvelines), and more precisely its district of Clef-de-Saint-Pierre, developed under the socialist town hall of Alain Danet in the 1990s, is in fact one of the rare towns to honor the resistance fighter Missak Manouchian d 'an odonym.
This is the place chosen by the Yvelines section of the French Communist Party (PCF) to pay, this Tuesday evening, a first tribute to the Armenian poet the day before his pantheonization.
“The legacy he leaves to the communists inspires me in our fight today,” says Alexandre Sylvain, secretary of the Young Communists 78. From yesterday to today, it is precisely in these generational exchanges that memory resistance becomes even more palpable.
“We will come as long as we can continue to commemorate these resistance fighters”
“As a kid, I brought baskets of supplies to the resistance fighters,” confides Henri Pouillot, an activist present at his side, “we will come as long as we can continue to commemorate these resistance fighters.
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Also read: Manouchian at the Pantheon: Mont-Valérien perpetuates the memory of those shot on February 21, 1944
Near the four wreaths laid at the foot of the sign on rue du Groupe-Manouchian, the departmental secretary of the PCF Joël Jegouzo welcomes this week of celebrations for the first foreign resistance fighter to enter the Pantheon, but nevertheless condemns a political recovery of the 'executive.
“This pantheonization of a communist activist, a first in history, is only justice for us,” he proclaims, “but it is antithetical to the recent immigration laws and questioning of land rights in Mayotte.
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