At 95, French Resistance veteran loyal to radical roots

Vitry-Sur-Seine — Tchakarian, a Turkish-born Armenian, is the last survivor of the Manouchian Group, mainly foreign Resistance fighters who were initially shunned for their communist orientation but later decorated as war heroes and feted in poetry, song and film.

He has worked to keep their legacy alive, belonging to a proud tradition of radicals — such as fellow Resistance nonagenarian Stephane Hessel, whose 2010 pamphlet "Indignez Vous!" (Time for Outrage!) turned into a surprise best-seller, urging a popular movement against finance capitalism.

The title inspired Spain’s "Indignados" (The Indignant), among masses worldwide who have taken to the streets to protest government austerity programmes seen as punishing ordinary people for the excesses of big business.

Tchakarian told AFP: "With the crisis, we are destroying countries. … It is here, now, the real dictatorship."

Tchakarian, a struggling apprentice tailor when he came to Paris in 1930, has been showered with decorations for his wartime activities including the Legion d’Honneur, France’s highest award.

Though he concedes he lives an easier life these days, Tchakarian says he remains a radical "revolted by the capitalist system".

"I’ll always belong to the working class," he said. Tchakarian was part of a network run by fellow Turkish-born Armenian Missak Manouchian. While many comrades, including Manouchian, were hunted down and executed, Tchakarian and a handful of others survived to tell their story.

With the death last November of fellow veteran 90-year-old Henry Karayan, he sees his mission as all the more important. "In a way, I’m the last of the Mohicans," he joked.

Like Manouchian, it was Tchakarian’s communist convictions that led him to take up the fight against the Nazis.

Long before Nazi troops swept across Europe, Tchakarian was putting his beliefs to the test on the streets of Paris.

— Code name:’Charles’ —

In February 1934, he was among a group of communists who fought French fascists outside parliament during riots that some left-wing commentators have described as a coup attempt by the far right.

He later became active in the left-wing Popular Front alliance, struggling for better working conditions.
And when the war broke out in 1939 he was among those sent east on a doomed mission to confront the invading Nazi forces.

Returning to Paris was a shock, he said. "There were Germans everywhere, the Nazi flag on the Eiffel Tower."

He already knew Manouchian, a journalist and poet. It was Manouchian who supplied him with his first anti-Nazi pamphlets in 1942.

But there was tension between the Resistance network run by General Charles De Gaulle from London and Manouchian’s alliance of communists and radicals: their critics feared the influence of Moscow.

"They hesitated when it came to supplying weapons," he said.

"They were scared of the USSR and for them, we were Bolsheviks," he recalled with a smile.

Once the different strands of the Resistance began working together, the Manouchian Group emerged, bringing together activists from Italy, Armenia, Polish Jews and other immigrants.

Tchakarian fought under the codename "Charles" as the group carried out attacks including the September 1943 ambush of SS General Julius Ritter, whom they gunned down in a Paris street.

But just months later, in February 1944, the group was decimated when French police, collaborating with the German security service, arrested 23 of its members, including Manouchian.

After a one-day show trial they were all sentenced to death.

Tchakarian slipped through the net thanks to a Paris police officer who hid him. He made his way south to Bordeaux and continued his Resistance activities until the end of the war.

Today, his home outside Paris is packed with archives on the Manouchian Group’s exploits, and he still visits schools to recount their wartime role.

"Not everyone likes what I have to say, but I don’t care," he said.

Jeremy Tordjman / Expatica