The death of Arsène Tchakarian on Saturday, August 4, at the age of 101, provides an opportunity to reflect on what remains today of the ideals of the Resistance and the fights led by these admirable women and men. Tchakarian was born in 1916 in the Ottoman Empire during the Armenian Genocide. He was a poorly received refugee in France at the age of 14 and he lingered irresolutely to become an apprentice tailor. Moreover, though the Republic did not bestow citizenship status upon him, he nonetheless defended her in 1934 against the extreme-right leagues that attempted to storm the National Assembly. Later, in 1939, he enlisted in the French army and fought against the German armed forces, and subsequently joined the Resistance in 1942 with his communist comrades. In 1943, along with one of his friends of Armenian origin, as well as the communist journalist Missak Manouchian and a hundred other foreigners, men and women, Italians, Armenians, Polish Jews, Tchakarian founded what quickly became the “Manouchian Group.” In the face of German troops, with almost no armaments or logistics, the Manouchian Group daringly succeeded by completing almost 115 derailments, sabotage and assassinations (including that of General SS Julius Ritter, head of the STO). In February 1944, 23 members of this group – including a woman – were arrested, judged and executed, after being the subject of the famous “Red Poster,” by which the Germans intended to denounce, through mob justice, the French whom they called “foreign terrorists.”
Barely escaping, Arsène Tchakarian, however, continued to resist from Bordeaux. Furthermore, after the war, Tchakarian resumed his job as a tailor, whereby he remained anonymous and a forgotten hero. Tchakarian was a tireless storyteller, recounting the history of his group, but he would have to wait until 1958 (28 years after his arrival in France, and 16 years after his acts of heroism) for France to grant him nationality; and in 2012 Tchakarian was promoted Officer of the Legion of Honour, long after so many people who were perhaps less deserving.
Let us remember the lesson of the Manoukian Group: today, as such, the battle against evil is universal. It does not concern only the French; and the foreigners who have lived in our country knew back then and those who are here today will know once more how to give their lives for a cause that surpasses us all: the freedom of future generations.
However, at the time of these madly daring acts by the Manouchian Group, the act of resistance was simple, frightfully simple: there were the fascists who wanted to destroy the Republic, then the Nazis who wanted to destroy civilization. It was easy to understand that a larger force could destroy them. The only debate was whether the resistance should be achieved by joining the Allied armies, or from within; in both cases, the adversary was clear: a group of people with a diabolical ideology. The culprits of the misfortunes of France could be identified. And their subsequent elimination would suffice to revive hope for a better world.
Today, resisting is no longer so simple: capitalism, the market and the forces that drive it are mechanisms; not people easy to eliminate or weaken. And those who, in the tribunes, in Parliament, in books or stubborn invectives, use the rhetoric of the Resistance (as if they were confronted with Nazis, and that they were themselves on the hills) should think twice before believing in the premises that lead to forming a new “Manouchian group” in the face of a totalitarian power.
Today, in any case, in our countries where there is a democracy that is certainly largely formal, there is no point in looking for those who are responsible for it, rather we must look for causes. What matters is neither to knock off the leaders, who are already more or less interchangeable, nor the leading figures of a triumphant plutocracy, but rather to change the mechanisms by which democracy and the market are organized, which have led to the current disaster, including the ecological one. It’s a lot less romantic; it requires much less physical courage; but much more knowledge, skill, tactics, strategy, to act at the right time and in the right place, to change the ideology of the world, and to change the rules of the game. To do otherwise would not change anything in the world, except that it would open the way to new totalitarian powers, not necessarily more pleasant than those of today. All anger, all rage is welcome in these fights, provided that you understand the stake and do not misappropriate the hopes.
j@attali.com