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The President of France, Emmanuel Macron, paid tribute this November 11 to the last fighter of the French Resistance during World War II, Hubert Germain, who died last October at the age of 101. The French president led the commemoration in the framework of Armistice Day.
Under an autumn sun, President Emmanuel Macron led the ceremony to officially bid farewell to the last survivor of France’s ‘last companion of the Liberation’.
Hubert Germain passed away on October 12 at the age of 101. His coffin, draped in the French flag, was transported down the Champs-Elysees in an armored vehicle to the Arc de Triomphe, where Macron and US Vice President Kamala Harris paid their respects.
The Paris-born fighter was one of 1,038 people awarded the Order of Liberation for his heroism during World War II, by the former president and founder of the country’s current Constitution, Charles De Gaulle, who ruled between 1959 and 1969 .
“Hubert Germain will join his fighting brothers and, with them, all those who defended the life of France (…) France is freedom. Live, survive and overcome their tests, because, from generation to generation, women and men they pass the torch of the ideal, “said the head of state.
The role of the one who later became a deputy and minister of his country is remembered in French history, after going to the United Kingdom as a teenager to join the de Gaulle movement, who then organized the resistance of the German occupation.
He continued to fight key battles at Bir-Hakeim in Libya, at El Alamein, a city in northern Egypt, and in Tunisia, as well as the invasion of German-occupied France in 1944 that liberated the country.
The funeral of the last survivor of the French Resistance was organized to take place this Thursday, in Mont-Valérien, a monument to the resistance fighters and a significant place of French national memory.
Homage to Germain coincided with the 103rd anniversary of the Armistice
The tributes for Germain coincided with the 103rd ceremony to commemorate the Armistice, signed on November 11, 1918, and which ended the First World War.
At the Armistice Day ceremony, Macron placed on Germain’s coffin a Cross of Lorraine, the symbol of resistance, made of wood from Notre-Dame Cathedral, following the wishes of the remembered fighter.
A moving tribute was lived in Paris, but the Armistice is also remembered in different parts of the world.
Dignitaries and government leaders from across the Western Front in Europe reflected on the losses of millions during the four-year war, the end of which harbored the seeds of an even more cruel World War II, begun nearly two decades later.
Beneath the Menin Gate at Ypres, in the heart of Flanders Fields, western Belgium, where thousands died in the war, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo stood between the walls with the names of more than 54,000 deceased British servicemen .
“They will not grow old,” De Croo said, noting that they linger in memories.
UN Secretary General António Guterres also joined the dignitaries with a two-minute silence in the UK pavilion at the venue for the COP26 climate conference, which is taking place in Glasgow, Scotland.
World War I pitted the armies of France, the British Empire, Russia, and the United States against a German-led coalition that included the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires. Almost 10 million soldiers died, sometimes tens of thousands perished in a single day.
With Reuters, AP and AFP
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