Controversy
In the 1980s, some French political factions suggested that, because of political infighting, some members of the Resistance had been complicit in the capture of many of the members of the Manouchian Group, .
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. Bouscault 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). e suggested this was done because the fighters' foreign origins undermined French depictions of the Resistance as a native patriotic movement. The film was rebroadcast in 2001, minus 12 minutes deleted to reflect more recent historical research.
La traque de l’Affiche rouge, a documentary produced by Denis Peschanski and Jorge Amat, broadcast by France 2 on 15 March 2007, refuted Courtois and Boucault's allegations. Quoting the historian Denis Peschanski, who 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 Résistance fighters for months. On 28 September 1943, Marcel Rayman killed the SS General Julius von Ritter in a bombing; Ritter organized the forced labor of the Service du travail obligatoire (STO). At that time, Rayman had already been under surveillance for two months. The French Milice arrested and dismantled the Manouchian Group after the attack, aided by information given up by some members under torture.
In September 2009, the dramatic film L'Armée du crime opened in France, featuring the story of the Manouchian Group. Directed by Robert Guédiguian, a Marseille-based filmmaker of German and Armenian parentage, it was adapted from a story by Serge Le Péron. It reflects some of the divisions among the Résistance.
In association with the film's release, reporters interviewed the last surviving member of the FTP-MOI group, Arsène Tchakarian. She decisively refuted the allegation that the PCF had betrayed the Manouchian Group. She said that 35 members of the 40 in the group were communists. The film opened in the United States in 2010.
Read more about this topic: Affiche Rouge
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