The Affiche Rouge ("Red Poster") is a famous propaganda poster, distributed by Vichy French and German authorities in the spring of 1944 in occupied Paris, to discredit a French Resistance group known as the Manouchian Group. The term Affiche Rouge also refers more broadly to the circumstances surrounding the incident.
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Background
In mid-November 1943, the French police arrested 23 members of the Communist Francs-Tireurs et Partisans de la Main d'Oeuvre Immigrée (FTP-MOI), who were part of the French Resistance. [1]. The group was called the "Manouchian Group" after its commander, Missak Manouchian. It formed part of a network of about 100 fighters, who were responsible for practically all acts of armed resistance in the Paris region between March and November 1943.[2]
Its membership included eight Poles, five Italians, three Hungarians, two Armenians, a Spaniard, a Romanian (Olga Bancic) and three French. Eleven of them were Jewish.[1]
After having been tortured for three months, the 23 were tried by a German military court. In an effort to discredit the Resistance, the authorities invited French celebrities (from the world of the cinema and other arts) to attend the trial and encouraged the media to give it the widest coverage possible. The Manouchian Group's members were executed before a firing squad in Fort Mont-Valérien on February 21, 1944. The woman, Olga Bancic, who had served the group as a messenger, was taken to Stuttgart, where she was beheaded with an axe on May 10, 1944.
In the spring of 1944, the (Fascist) authorities launched a disinformation campaign, designed to discredit the Manouchian Group and defuse any anger over their execution. The primary vehicle of the campaign was a poster, which became known as Affiche Rouge due to its red background. An estimated 15,000 copies of the poster were printed [3]. Along with these posters, flyers were handed out, claiming that the Resistance was headed by foreigners, Jews, unemployed people and criminals; the campaign characterized the Resistance as a "foreigners' conspiracy against French life and the sovereignty of France" :
"Si des Français pillent, volent, sabotent et tuent... Ce sont toujours des étrangers qui les commandent. Ce sont toujours des chômeurs et des criminels professionnels qui exécutent. Ce sont toujours des juifs qui les inspirent. C’est l’armée du crime contre la France. Le banditisme n’est pas l’expression du Patriotisme blessé, c’est le complot étranger contre la vie des Français et contre la souveraineté de la France."[3]
Although the poster attempted to depict the group as "terrorists", the campaign seems to have had the opposite effect, advertising the success of people whom the general public saw as freedom fighters. [3]. Legend has it that supporters scribbled the words MORTS POUR LA FRANCE (They died for France) and put flowers underneath some of the posters. In 1975, Philippe Ganier Raymond claimed that there was no historical record of such activity[4]; however, more recent research indicates that such contemporaneous defacement occurred.[3].
Legacy
In 1955, Louis Aragon wrote a poem memorializing the Manouchian Group, Strophes pour se souvenir.
The poem was published in 1956 in Le roman inachevé and was put to music and sung by Léo Ferré in 1959 under the title L'Affiche rouge. Rouben Melik and Paul Éluard also wrote poems in honour of the Manouchian Group. [5][6]
In 1997, at the prompting of Robert Badinter, the French Parliament authorized the erection of a monument commemorating the execution of 1,006 citizens and members of the French Resistance, including the Manouchian Group, at Mont-Valérien between 1940 and 1944. The sculptor Pascal Convert created the monument, and Prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin dedicated it on September 20, 2003.
Controversy
The Affiche Rouge incident took on a completely different dimension in the 1980s, when French political factions made accusations of complicity by members of the Resistance, for the purpose of political infighting.
A film documentary by Stéphane Courtois and Mosco Boucault, Des terroristes à la retraite, broadcast by Antenne 2 in 1983, included interviews of surviving FTP-MOI members and families of the victims. Mosco accused the French Communist Party (PCF) of having deliberately sacrificed the fighters in the power struggle with the Gaullists for control over the National Council of Resistance (CNR), mainly because their foreign origins undermined depictions of the Resistance as a native patriotic movement. The film was rebroadcast in 2001, minus 12 minutes edited out to reflect more recent historical research. [7]
The PCF denies the allegation. Another documentary, produced by Denis Peschanski and Jorge Amat and broadcast by France 2 on 15 March, 2007, contradicted Stéphane Courtois and Boucault's allegations.[8][9]. Quoting the historian Denis Peschanski who had had access to new documents from the Russian, French and German archives, the new documentary alleged that the fall of the Manouchian Group had been due exclusively to the French police's work. The two, newly-created, branches of the Renseignements généraux (RG) intelligence agency — the Brigades spéciales 1 and 2 — had trailed the Resistants during months. Marcel Rayman killed the SS General Julius von Ritter in a bombing on 28 September, 1943, who was one of the main organisers of the Service du travail obligatoire (STO). At that time, he was already being followed since two months, and the Manouchian Group would be dismantled only afterwards, through various arrests (including Davidovitch's arrest and subsequent information given after being tortured).
In September 2009 the last surviving member of the Manouchian group, Arsène Tchakarian, decisively refued the allegation that the PCF had betrayed them, referring specifically to an interview with Courtois of 1985.
Content
The poster reads:
Des libérateurs? La libération par l'armée du crime!
"Liberators? Liberation by the army of crime!"
From left to right, and top to bottom, individual portraits are labeled:
- GRZYWACZ: Juif polonais, 2 attentats (Polish Jew, 2 terrorist attacks)
- ELEK: Juif hongrois, 5 déraillements (Hungarian Jew, 5 derailments)
- WASJBROT: Juif polonais, 1 attentat, 1 déraillement (Polish Jew, 1 terrorist attack, 1 derailment)
- WITCHITZ: Juif polonais, 15 attentats (Polish Jew, 15 terrorist attacks - although it is unclear if Witchitz was in fact Jewish or Polish)
- FINGERCWAJG: Juif polonais, 3 attentats, 5 déraillements (Polish Jew, 3 terrorist attacks, 5 derailments)
- BOCZOV: Juif hongrois, chef dérailleur, 20 attentats (Hungarian Jew, chief of derailment operations, 20 terrorist attacks)
- FONTANOT: Communiste italien, 12 attentats (Italian Communist, 12 terrorist attacks. His correct name was Fontano)
- ALFONSO: Espagnol rouge, 2 attentats (Red Spaniard, 2 terrorist attacks)
- RAYMAN: Juif polonais, 13 attentats (Polish Jew, 13 terrorist attacks)
- MANOUCHIAN: Arménien, chef de bande, 56 attentats, 150 morts, 600 blessés (Armenian, boss of the gang, 56 terrorist attacks, 150 dead, 600 wounded)
The bottom features photographs of:
- the right shoulder and right chest of a corpse, riddled by bullet holes
- a dead body lying on the ground
- a derailed locomotive
- a derailed train
- a collection of small arms, grenades, and bomb components, displayed on a table
- another derailed train
References
- ^ Stéphane Courtois, Denis Peschanski and Adam Rayski: Le Sang de l'étranger. Les Immigrés de la MOI dans la Résistance, Fayard, Paris 1989
- ^ Arsène Tchakarian: Les franc-tireurs de l'affiche rouge, Messidor/Éditions sociales, 1986
- ^ a b c d 1944: l'Affiche Rouge, on the website of the Cité nationale de l'histoire de l'immigration (with video excerpts) (French)
- ^ Philippe Ganier Raymond, L'Affiche rouge: La vérité sur les partisans sacrifiés, Fayard 1975
- ^ Résistance. l’Affiche rouge Fusillés, poem by Rouben Melik, re-published by L'Humanité, 21 February 2004 (French)
- ^ Paul Éluard, Légion (poem) published in L'Humanité, 21 February 2004 (French)
- ^ Avec ou sans guillemets, L'Humanité, 18 February 2004 (French)
- ^ Denis Peschanski – Jorge Amat, La traque de l’Affiche rouge, 72 minutes, compagnie des Phares et Balises en collaboration avec la Fondation Gabriel Péri et L’Humanité, 2006. Resume of the film (French)
- ^ Les héros de l’Affiche rouge, L'Humanité, 13 February 2007 (French)
Bibliography
- Benoît Raisky, L’Affiche rouge 21 février 1944, Ils n’étaient que des enfants., Éditions du Félin, 2004 (review by L'Humanité)
Films
- Franck Cassenti, L'Affiche Rouge (1976)
- Stéphane Courtois and Mosco Boucault, Des terroristes à la retraite (1983)
- Pascal Convert, Mont-Valérien, aux noms des fusillés
- Denis Peschanski – Jorge Amat, La traque de l’Affiche rouge (2007)
- Robert Guédiguian, L'Armée Du Crime (2009)
See also
External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Groupe Manouchian |
- L’Armée du crime. Arsène Tchakarian « S’emparer de la vérité»
- L’Armée du crime: An Interview with Arsène Tchakarian (English language version of above article)
- 21 février 1944: L'Affiche rouge (herodote.net) (French)
- Missak Manouchian (netarmenie.com) (French)
- Missak Manouchian - Ein armenischer Partisan (German)
- Song performed by Léo Ferré (French) (Daily Motion)
- " Vingt et trois étrangers et nos frères pourtant " in L'Humanité, 21 February 2004 (French)
- Interview of Henri Karayan, former member of the Manouchian Group in L'Humanité, 21 February 2004 (French)
- Julien Lauprêtre : " Manouchian était dans ma cellule… et je ne le savais pas " in L'Humanité, 21 February 2004 (French)
- Rino Della Negra, ailier droit résistant, article on one of the member of the Manuchian Group, in L'Humanité, 21 February 2004 (French)
- Les nouvelles censures Par Pascal Convert Sculpteur, plasticien, concepteur du monument à la mémoire des résistants et otages fusillés au Mont Valérien, auteur du documentaire Mont-Valérien, aux noms des fusillés. in L'Humanité, 21 February 2004 (French)
- Présentation en avant-première du nouveau hors-série de l’Humanité
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