THE EXECUTION OF 21 FEBRUARY 1944 AT THE FORT OF MONT VALERIEN

The execution of 21 February 1944 at the fort of Mont Valérien

On 21 February 1944, almost 78 years ago to the day, 25 members of the Resistance were executed by firing squad at Mont Valérien, in a small clearing inside the fort.

Among them were three young high-school students from Saint-Brieuc, Brittany, sentenced to death “for guerrilla activities and involvement in a murder”. The other 22 were members of a network dismantled by French police in November 1943, which included Missak Manouchian,  the FTP-MOI’s regional military leader for the Paris area.

Three unauthorised photographs were taken that day by Clemens Rüther, a German Army NCO who attended the trial, execution and burial of the group. These are almost certainly the only existing photographs of an execution at Mont Valérien.
 

The trial of the “Manouchian Group”, which began on 15 February 1944, was intended as a “show trial”, to present a Resistance “commanded by foreigners, (...) inspired by Jews” (extract from a pamphlet produced by the German propaganda service); a “criminal army”, which the poster published at the time by German propaganda, and reproduced here, sought to denounce.
 

This antisemitic, xenophobic and anti-Communist propaganda poster, which had 15 000 copies posted up across France, completely missed its objective, however. Bringing Manouchian and his comrades out of anonymity, it soon became a symbol of liberty and fraternity.

Foreigners who “died for France”, Missak Manouchian and his comrades are the embodiment of what Mont Valérian was during the Second World War: the main place of execution of foreigners, Jews and Communists in France.

“Today, it is sunny. I look at the sun and the beauty of the natural world I so loved, as I bid farewell to life and to you all, my beloved wife and dear friends.”

It was in French that the Armenian poet Missak Manouchian chose to write his last lines to his wife, from prison in Fresnes on 21 February 1944, just hours before his execution alongside 22 comrades of the FTP-MOI group that bore his name. A final letter, signed Michel, the Frenchized form of his first name, as a declaration of love to the country which, in 1944, shared his quest for liberty, equality and fraternity. A final letter, whose mistakes are a reminder of how many had come from abroad to fight oppression and fascism, first in Spain, then in France

“The letter, which would later serve as inspiration for Aragon’s poem L’Affiche rouge, was the last trace of a man who had been confronted by death from an early age. Armenian, Manouchian was only nine years old when, in 1915, he saw his parents die in what is commonly regarded as the first genocide of the 20th century. His political activism began in 1934, when he joined the Communist Party. Deeply attached to the fate of his homeland, he also belonged to the Armenian Relief Committee. A member of the Spanish Republican Relief Committee during the Spanish Civil War, he went into hiding when France’s defeat was announced in 1940. In 1943, he became leader of an FTP-MOI network in the Paris area. (…).”

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