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President Emmanuel Macron led tributes on Thursday to the last French Resistance fighter from World War II who died last month and will be buried with a cross carved from the wood of Notre-Dame cathedral.
Hubert Germain, who was the last surviving Resistance fighter honoured by late Free France leader Charles de Gaulle, died aged 101 in October.
His coffin, draped in the French flag, was carried up the Champs-Élysées on an armoured vehicle to the Arc de Triomphe, where Macron and visiting US Vice President Kamala Harris paid their respects.
Germain, the son of a general in France’s colonial army, was in his late teens when he fled to Britain after France’s capitulation where he joined up with de Gaulle who was organising resistance to the German occupation. He went on to fight in key battles at Bir-Hakeim in Libya, at El Alamein in Egypt and in Tunisia, as well as in the invasion of German-occupied France in 1944 which liberated the country.
The Paris-born fighter was one of 1,038 people decorated with the Order of the Liberation for their heroism by de Gaulle, who would go on to become president of France and is the founder of the current constitution.
Germain, who became an MP and minister, will be buried later Thursday in a special crypt reserved for Resistance fighters at Mont Valérien, a former fortress west of Paris where German troops used to execute opponents.
At the Armistice Day ceremony Thursday, Macron laid a Cross of Lorraine, the symbol of the resistance, fashioned out of wood from Notre-Dame cathedral on his coffin, in accordance with Germain’s wishes.
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Source : france24
