Jean-Louis Crémieux-Brilhac

Jean-Louis Crémieux-Brilhac CBE (22 January 1917 – 8 April 2015) was a French journalist, a member of the French Resistance and a historian. During World War II he directed the Free French propaganda radio broadcasts to Europe. After the war he helped create France's state-owned publishing house, La Documentation Française. Crémieux was born to a middle class Jewish family in the Colombes suburb of Paris. His political awareness was raised in high school by his uncle Benjamin Crémieux (1888-1944), a literary critic. Through his uncle, Crémieux met and was influenced by the anti-authoritarian surrealism of André Malraux and the liberal internationalism of Stefan Zweig. He graduated from the Lycée Condorcet in 1933. But it was first during a school vacation in 1931 that he visited Germany and in subsequent trips saw first-hand the work of the Nazi Party. In 1935 he joined, and became the youngest member of the Comité de vigilance des intellectuels antifascistes (CVIA) which spearheaded ...