Date of birth:

December 15th, 1906 (Dijon, France)

Date of death:

March 28th, 1959 (Suresnes, France)

Nationality:

French (1870-present, Republic)

Mobilized in September 1939 as a radio sergeant in the Air Force, he was demobilized in June 1940 as a second lieutenant. Refusing defeat, he undertakes his first actions of resistance.

From 1940, he organized the transport of mail in the northern zone, southern zone, by means of traveling wagons and imagined hiding the mail in the heating pipes of the wagons.

These transports are for the benefit of the network of Colonel Rémy la Confrérie Notre Dame. At the same time, it lodges patriots pursued by the Gestapo. In 1942, he came into contact with the Civil and Military Organization (CMO) and its PTT branch.

An active member of the PTT staff from the summer of 1943, he was one of the direct collaborators of Ernest Pruvost, national leader of this group.

Placed under the orders of Simone Michel-Lévy, he became the linchpin of the transport and delivery of mail from London.

In November 1943, following the departure of Pruvost wanted by the Gestapo and the arrest of Simone Michel-Lévy, he took the lead of the EMPTT movement.

Crossing the whole of France, he created active nuclei in centers of medium importance. In this meticulous prospecting and full of dangers, he shows the qualities of a leader and leader.

Returning to Paris, he finalized, in agreement with Pruvost, distant but still in contact, the complete plan for the sabotage of the enemy's telecommunications and the counter-sabotage of the important stations likely to serve the Allied armies (plan "Potard ", plan" Violet ").

He manages to get hold of the three secret codes of Darnand and the Militia. With the help of Horvais, he obtains a copy of all the encrypted telegrams which pass through the central telegraph in Paris. The translation of these documents is communicated every day to Captain Portalis (alias Billy), of the Allied intelligence service.

On August 3, 1944, he was arrested by the Gestapo with two assistants, Louis Tanty and Marcelle Guérin, in a café near the Montparnasse station in Paris. Questioned very harshly on rue des Saussaies, he refused to speak. Interned in Fresnes, he was deported on August 15, 1944 from the Pantin station to the Buchenwald camp.

On September 3, 1944, it was sent to the Dora underground factory where the V1 and V2 were assembled. Assuming himself to be an electrical engineer, he participates in the manufacture of V1s. Quickly accused of sabotage, he was transferred on November 3, 1944 to Nordhausen prison where he was sentenced to death on November 11. On November 17, he returned to Dora from where, in the face of the Allied advance, he was transferred to Bergen-Belsen on April 5, 1945. He was liberated by British troops on April 15, 1945 and repatriated to France on April 27.

After the war, the reserve lieutenant-colonel (Transmissions), Edmond Debeaumarché was a member of the Consultative Assembly in 1945.

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• - Edmond DEBEAUMARCHÉ | L'Ordre de la Libération et son Musée