Simone Veil, Maurice Genevoix, Joséphine Baker, and Missak Manouchian have been enshrined in the Panthéon under Emmanuel Macron, honoring resistance, memory, and universal struggles. The president has also paved the way for Robert Badinter, a staunch advocate for the abolition of the death penalty, to be recognized.
Before the upcoming Panthéon induction of historian and resistance fighter Marc Bloch, announced on Saturday by Emmanuel Macron, the president has previously enshrined four other great figures in this republican temple: Simone Veil, Maurice Genevoix, Joséphine Baker, and Missak Manouchian.
Additionally, on February 14, 2024, during a tribute to former Socialist Minister of Justice Robert Badinter, who spearheaded the abolition of the death penalty in France in 1981, the head of state hinted at his eventual Panthéon induction. His name, Macron said, "must be inscribed alongside those who have done so much for human progress and for France."
Under the Fifth Republic, the President of the Republic alone decides who enters the Panthéon.
Simone Veil (July 1, 2018)
Women's rights through the legalization of abortion, Europe, and the Holocaust... The induction of this prominent figure in French and European political life, a survivor of Auschwitz, was an obvious choice for all. The announcement was made at record speed: only five days after her death on June 30, 2017.
As her family did not want her to be separated from her husband Antoine, Emmanuel Macron agreed that the couple would be enshrined together in the Panthéon.
This had only happened once before, in 1907, with Sophie Berthelot, the first woman interred in the Panthéon, as the wife of the distinguished Marcelin Berthelot.
"We wanted Simone Veil to enter the Panthéon without waiting for the passage of generations so that her struggles, dignity, and hope would remain a beacon during the troubled times we face," Macron said in his speech on July 1, 2018.
With her, he emphasized, "the memory of 78,500 Jews and Roma deported from France enters and will live on in this place."
Maurice Genevoix (November 11, 2020)
With the induction of Maurice Genevoix, a World War I veteran and writer who passed away in 1980, chronicler of the horrors of the trenches, Macron sought to honor "all those of '14," the "ordinary heroes."
The ceremony took place 102 years to the day after the Armistice of November 11, 1918, in the midst of a new Covid-19 lockdown.
"They are here, those of '14," Macron said, "arriving by the millions to enter under the dome" of this "temple of the heroes of our homeland," paying tribute to "a republican destiny" and "a French existence."
Joséphine Baker (November 30, 2021)
"I'm back, Paris!" The music hall star, resistance fighter, and Franco-American antiracist activist Joséphine Baker became the first Black figure and the first artist to join the Panthéon. She is also only the sixth woman among 81 interred there.
Emancipation, women's rights, civil rights—she embodies the struggles of the 20th century.
"My France is Joséphine," declared Macron. "Her cause was universalism, the unity of humankind. The equality of all with respect for each individual's identity. Hospitality for all differences brought together by a shared will and dignity. Emancipation against confinement."
A symbolic empty coffin entered the Panthéon, as her remains remain in her family vault in Monaco.
Missak Manouchian (February 21, 2024)
Eighty years to the day after his execution by the Germans at Mont-Valérien, Armenian poet and worker Missak Manouchian was enshrined in the Panthéon.
He was joined symbolically by his wife Mélinée Manouchian, also a resistance fighter of Armenian origin, who survived him by 45 years (though she herself was not inducted). Twenty-three of his comrades, most executed alongside him, were also symbolically included, with their names inscribed at the Panthéon.
"Foreigners and yet our brothers, French by preference," Macron declared, quoting a poem by Aragon set to music by Léo Ferré, which cemented the memory of the Manouchian Group after the war.
With AFP
Comments