French President Emmanuel Macron leads a ceremony Wednesday honouring Missak Manouchian, a stateless poet of Armenian origin who died fighting the Nazi occupation during World War II. Manouchian becomes the first foreign Resistance fighter to enter France's Panthéon mausoleum for national heroes.
The belated honour to Missak Manouchian has been seen as long overdue recognition of the bravery of foreign communists – many Jewish – who fought the Nazis alongside French Resistants.
"Jewish, Hungarian, Polish, Armenians, communists, they gave their lives for our country," President Emmanuel Macron said this weekend.
"It's a way of ensuring all forms of internal Resistance enter (the Panthéon), including some too long forgotten," he told communist newspaper L'Humanite.
The bodies of Manouchian and his wife Mélinée, also a member of the Resistance, will be transferred from the Parisian cemetery where they were buried together to the Panthéon.
The names of 23 of his communist comrades-in-arms – including Polish, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish and Romanian fighters – will be added to a commemorative plaque inside the monument.
Under Macron, since 2017 three people have been awarded a place inside the Panthéon: writer Maurice Genevoix, women's rights icon Simone Veil, and US-born entertainer and French Resistance member Josephine Baker.
Baker – the first black woman to receive the honour – had been awarded French nationality before the war.
Last year the president said Manouchian would receive the honour too, paying tribute to his "bravery" and "quiet heroism".
At the time, parliament was debating a controversial immigration bill, which Macron eventually signed into law earlier this year.
He has also called for former French justice minister Robert Badinter, who in 1981 brought an end to capital punishment in France, to be "pantheonised" after he died earlier this month.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)