Date of birth:

June 18th, 1910 (Marseille, France)

Date of death:

December 12th, 1998 (Paris, VIIIe, France)

Nationality:

French

Reserve Lieutenant in the Infantry at the end of his military service in 1932, at the end of his studies he obtained a doctorate in law (specializing in economics) and a degree in literature.

Editor in 1932 at the Ministry of Finance, Francis-Louis Closon was a scholarship holder in 1938-1939 from the Rockefeller Foundation in the United States. He was mobilized in 1939 in New York at the French Purchasing Mission, where he served as Head of Financial Services.

At the disposal of Free France in September 1940, he left New York for London and enlisted in the Free French Forces on July 17, 1941.

He was then appointed Acting Director of Finance of France Combattante then, in 1942, Director of the Interior Police Department.

Volunteer to go on a mission to occupied France, he carried out three missions. The first took place at the request of Jean Moulin, from April 15 to May 20, 1943; he is delegated by General de Gaulle to make contact with the underground Resistance organizations.

For his second mission, from August 15, 1943 to May 4, 1944, the date of his return to London, he was responsible, on behalf of the French Committee for National Liberation, to form the Liberation Committees. For this, he made a great number of trips under different pseudonyms (Fouché, Cou, Coullanges, Vincent, Derdon) while braving the dangers of clandestine action. He succeeded in creating Liberation Committees in most of the big cities of France (Paris, Rouen, Lille, Dijon, Marseille, Toulouse, etc.). He also manages, thanks to his personal influence, to unite through the Liberation Committees in a common action, the Resistance organizations and the political parties fighting for the Liberation.

Despite an accident that immobilizes him in plaster, he does not interrupt any of his organizing activities. His third mission (July-August 1944) took him to the southern zone in a maquis from where he went to Paris to install the Prefect of Police Charles Luizet in his duties.

September 3, 1944: he takes office as Regional Commissioner of the Republic for Nord-Pas-de-Calais until March 1946.

From 1946 to 1961, he was Director General and founder of the National Institute of Statistics of Economic Studies (INSEE) and CEO of Information and Freedom from 1961 to 1976.

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• - Francis-Louis CLOSON | L'Ordre de la Libération et son Musée