Arsène Tchakarian: French Resistance fighter dies aged 101

The last member of an immigrant group who fought the Nazis for the French Resistance has died aged 101.

Arsène Tchakarian escaped a Nazi crackdown in which 22 of the group's fighters were shot by the German occupation forces in Paris in 1944.

He was awarded France's highest honour.

President Emmanuel Macron tweeted that Tchakarian, an ethnic Armenian, was "a hero of the Resistance and tireless witness whose voice resonated strongly to the very end".

Tchakarian only became a French citizen in 1958. He was granted several medals for gallantry, including the prestigious Legion of Honour in 2012.

How did he resist?

Tchakarian carried out attacks alongside Jews and other immigrant guerrillas against the Nazis.

His group was led by a fellow Armenian, Missak Manouchian, who was among those shot by firing squad in February 1944.

Both Tchakarian and Manouchian were communists, like many of the partisans who resisted the



Nazi occupation of Europe.

The collaborationist French Vichy regime issued a "red poster" in February 1944 after the execution of Manouchian and his comrades, intended to convince the public that the fighters were just a foreign criminal gang.

Tchakarian managed to flee to Bordeaux, where he remained active in the Resistance until France was liberated in August 1944.

'Because we loved France'

After the war Tchakarian said the guerrillas were "not heroes", but had "resisted because we could do it: we didn't have families or jobs.

"And we resisted because we loved France. It had adopted us."

In later life he campaigned to get the Ottoman Turkish massacres of Armenians during World War One recognised internationally as genocide.

In 2014, the then French President, François Hollande, inaugurated a Missak Manouchian park in the Armenian capital Yerevan, with his Armenian counterpart at the time, Serzh Sargsyan.