Debiez, Henri

Date of birth:: June 9th, 1920 (Aime, France)
Date of death:: July 12th, 1944 (Genas, France)
Nationality:: French

Biography

In 1939, he was a student at the Grenoble Electrotechnical Institute.

It was there that Henri Debiez joined the resistance in 1941 under the name of "Franck" and quickly became deputy to the departmental manager for Isère of the "Combat" movement led by Henri Frenay.

It recruits and supervises a thousand young people, most of them students. These, formed in Frankish groups, act against the troops occupying the department and destroy military works. Most often Henri Debiez is at their head.

Through his action and that of his companions, Isère became one of the first resistant departments in France.

In February 1942, he assumed the departmental direction of the grouping of the "United Forces of Youth" (FUJ).

Following the terrible repression carried out by the Germans against the resistance movements in the Grenoble region in July 1943, he went to Lyon where he assumed the functions of regional leader of the "FUJ" and succeeded in bringing together all the Patriotic Youth of the Rhône-Alpes region.

At the end of 1943 he was appointed regional leader of the "Youth of the United Resistance Movements" for Rhône-Alpes, ie young people from the "Combat", "Liberation" and "Franc-Tireur" resistance movements. He is the organizer of all their immediate actions (sabotage, helping hands). Also regional head of the federation of the "United Forces of Patriotic Youth", he was, from May 25, 1944, one of the four members of the National Steering Committee of the "Youth of the United Resistance Movements".

He also organized an underground press by creating the newspaper Jeune Combattant and supervised the establishment of the maquis in the department of Ain.

Arrested in Lyon on July 8, 1944 by the Gestapo, he was abominably tortured multiple times at Fort Montluc before being shot with twenty-one comrades on July 12 in Genas, without having spoken.

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