 Tchakarian was the last surviving member of the Manouchian Group ("Groupe Manouchian"), a Paris-based resistance cell led by Missak Manouchian.Tchakarian was born to an ethnic Armenian family in Sapanca, the Ottoman Empire (present-day Turkey) on December 21, 1916.The family fled to Bulgaria to escape the Armenian Genocide during World War I. Tchakarian arrived in France in 1930 with his family and settled permanently in the country.