Communists at Forefront of Recognition

Guy Ducoloné, a Communist deputy for the Hauts-de-Seine département, was president of the French Committee for the Recognition of the Genocide of Armenians. In April 1965 he was the first politician to raise the question of the massacre in the French parliament. In the following years, he untiringly repeated his question on April 24 to the different governments that came, one after the other.

Is it necessary to recall, in addition, that many French people of Armenian origin fought in the ranks of the Communist Resistance to the Nazi occupier, beginning with the most illustrious among them: Missak Maouchian, the poet, Communist, and member of the FTP-MOI, shot by firing squad at Mont-Valérien on February 21, 1944?

In 2001, France finally recognized the genocide of Armenians. At the time, Senator Hélène Luc justly applauded this “major act of memory and of truth in the history of societies,” expressing her pride and her honor, in the name of French citizens, at a vote “which makes our country one of those which solemnly and institutionally put an end to the covering-up of and the negation of a tragic event in the 20th century,” as she said then.