Henri Frenay

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Henri Frenay (1905-1988) was a French military officer and French resistance member.

Henri Frenay was born in Lyon, France on November 11, 1905, into a Catholic family with a military tradition. He studied the Germanic languages at the University of Strasbourg. Afterwards he became a soldier like his father and studied in Saint Cyr and l'Ecole superieure de guerre and reached the rank of captain in 1934. At the outbreak of World War II, he rejoined the French army. German forces captured him in Vosges. He escaped from a POW camp in Alsace on June 27th, 1940 and made his way to Marseille.

At first the conservative, Catholic and patriotic Frenay supported the Vichy Regime but was soon disillusioned by the Nazi tendency of the Pétain regime, and he subsequently formed the French Resistance group Mouvement de liberation nationale in 1940. He became an editor of underground newspapers like Verités (English: Truths) and had a hand in the formation of the Combat group in November, 1941. In 1942 he and his group joined the Conseil National de la Résistance of Jean Moulin although Frenay was critical of Charles de Gaulle.

When the Gestapo captured Jean Moulin, Frenay fled to Algiers. In November 1943 he met De Gaulle who appointed him as a minister of prisoners, refugees and deportees.

After the war, Frenay served in De Gaulle's first provisional government. Afterwards he retired from the political life and became a businessman. He published his autobiography, The Night Will End: Memoirs of a Revolutionary in 1976.

Henri Frenay died at Porto Vecchio, Corsica on August 8th, 1988.