Affiche Rouge

The Affiche Rouge (Red Poster) is a notorious propaganda poster, distributed by Vichy France and German authorities in the spring of 1944 in occupied Paris, to discredit 23 immigrant French Resistance fighters, members of the Manouchian Group. The term Affiche Rouge also refers more broadly to the circumstances surrounding the poster's creation and distribution, the capture, trial and execution of these members of the Manouchian Group. 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. They were called the "Manouchian Group" after the commander, Missak Manouchian. The group was part of a network of about 100 fighters, who committed nearly all acts of armed resistance in the Paris metropolitan region between March and November 1943. Its membership included men of different backgrounds. 22 of them were Poles, five Italians, three Hungarians, two Armenians, three Spaniards, 1 French man and a Romanian woman; eleven members were Jewish. After having been tortured and interrogated for three months, the 23 were tried by a German military court. To discredit the Resistance, the authorities invited French celebrities (from the world of the cinema and other arts) to attend the trial and encourage the media to give it the widest coverage possible. All but one of the Manouchian Group's members were executed before a firing squad in Fort Mont-Valérien on 21 February 1944. Olga Bancic, who had served the group as a messenger, was taken to Stuttgart, where she was beheaded with an axe on 10 May 1944.