François Faure (resistance fighter)

François Faure (born February 21, 1897 in Paris ; died June 29, 1982 in Fleury-Mérogis ) was a French resistance fighter during the German occupation of France in World War II .

Life

Memorial plaque for François Faure on house at 167 Boulevard Saint-Germain in Paris

Faure came as the eldest child of the doctor , writer and art historian Élie Faure and his wife Suzanne, b. Gilard, in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. He had three siblings: Élisabeth (born 1898), Jean-Pierre (1900-1991) and Marie-Zéline (born 1904). After graduating from high school , he enlisted in the army on the day of his 18th birthday in February 1915 .

During the First World War he served first in the artillery coloniale , later in France itself and fought on the Polish side in the Polish-Soviet War in 1919 . At the end of the war he had the rank of aspirant (about: ensign ) and was awarded the Croix de guerre . He then became a member of the board of directors of a company specializing in school equipment.

In August 1939 he was assigned to the 505th Panzer Regiment in Vannes as a reserve officer . During the Second World War he took part in the 14th Panzer Battalion and was promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1940. After several days of fierce fighting, he was captured by German troops in Wassigny on May 22, 1940 and imprisoned in officers' camp IV-D near Hoyerswerda . In mid-June 1940 he heard there from across the BBC widespread call Charles de Gaulle ( "Appeal of June 18" ) to continue the fight against Germany. In November of that year Faure, who was able to simulate a serious illness, managed to escape from the camp and return to France via Switzerland .

In early 1941 he made contact with groups of the Resistance around Maurice Ripoche and Alfred Heurtaux in Paris . Faure began sending information to the UK , supplying British pilots with false papers for their return. In October 1941 he joined the Confrérie Notre-Dame (CND) resistance group and, under the cover name Paco, soon became the deputy of its leader, Gilbert Renault, alias Colonel Rémy. One of the tasks of the CND was to send information about ship movements of the German occupiers in the French ports to England.

In February and March 1942, since Rémy had traveled to London , Paco was temporarily head of the organization. He met with officials of the underground Communist Party (PCF) who asked him to bring de Gaulle their offer of cooperation. Therefore, on March 27, he himself secretly set off for London in a Westland Lysander plane . He managed to get de Gaulle the message and get his consent. Faure returned to France on April 25, 1942; after an unsuccessful attempt to jump off with a parachute , he was dropped off with a Lysander near Saint-Saëns in Haute-Normandie .

The Entreprises Jacques Steeg company he worked for had a factory in Saint-Saëns. Faure had founded a resistance group in the village, which was led by a factory employee. Over the next two weeks, Faure met with representatives of the PCF and resistance fighters such as Georges Beaufils and Alfred Touny . On May 15, 1942, at a meeting with two Breton resistance fighters in Paris, he was observed and arrested by the security service of the Reichsführer SS (SD). He was imprisoned in Fresnes for 14 months and taken to the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in Alsace on July 9, 1943 . In view of the approaching front , he was transferred to the Dachau concentration camp on September 4, 1944 . He was liberated there on April 29, 1945 and returned to Paris on May 15 of that year.

Faure became a delegate of the Assemblée consultative provisoire there . He resumed his work in the furniture industry until he retired in 1963.

After the war, Faure founded the Amicale des Déportés et Familles de Disparus de Natzweiler-Struthof et ses Kommandos in 1950 (Friends of the deportees and families of the victims of Natzweiler-Struthof and his commandos). He received numerous awards, including the war crosses of Poland and Lithuania , and was appointed officer of the Legion of Honor and Compagnon de la Liberation .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} François Faure at ordredelaliberation.fr, accessed on February 3, 2020
2. ↑ The international committee of Natzweiler-Struthof at struthof.fr, accessed on February 3, 2020