RIP: Jacques Robert

Paris - Jacques Robert, a key leader of the Resistance in France in World War II, died February 8, Le Monde reported last week. He was 83. Mr. Robert, born in Paris, was decorated for bravery in action during the German invasion in 1940. In August 1940, he joined the Resistance. He came to the attention of Gilbert Renault, the highest-ranking secret agent inside France for General Charles DeGaulle, the Free French leader, who was in London during much of the war. Mr. Robert made his way to London briefly in 1942, plunged into intelligence work there and parachuted back into France. Then he set up an underground Resistance group named Phratrie. Captain Andre Dewavrin, a high DeGaulle aide known as Colonel Passy, wrote later that Phratrie was “the most extraordinary” network that worked for the general’s Central Bureau for Intelligence and Action. Mr. Robert was arrested in 1943 in Nice but escaped to London, aided by patriotic French police. When the Allies invaded Normandy in 1944, he parachuted into France again, to lead guerrilla operations in central France. After the war he became a printing executive.
- New York Times