Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan left for France today and is scheduled to attend the reinterment of WWII resistance fighter Missak Manouchian this evening at the Panthéon in Paris exactly eighty years to the day after his execution by the Nazis.

French President Emmanuel Macron will lead the ceremony to pay homage to Manouchian, a poet and Communist activist, who took refuge in France after surviving the Armenian Genocide, and members of his resistance group.

Manouchian’s coffin, covered with the French flag, will be carried in the street in front of the Panthéon by soldiers of the Foreign Legion.

Macron decided to bestow Manouchian France's highest posthumous honor in 2023.

Manouchian’s wife Mélinée – also part of the Resistance – will join her husband in the mausoleum of revered historical figures in line with the wishes of his family.

Manouchian’s remains will be transferred from the Ivry Cemetery near Paris.

The Panthéon is the resting place of France’s most revered figures including Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Èmile Zola, and Marie Curie.

“Missak Manouchian chose France twice, first as a young Armenian who loved Baudelaire and Victor Hugo, and then through the blood he shed for our country,” the French presidency said in a statement last year announcing the Panthéon homage.

Accompanying Pashinyan are his wife Anna Hakobyan, Armenian Defense Minister Suren Papikyan, and other Armenian officials.