Jean-Louis Cremieux-Brilhac: Resistance activist and historian who directed Free France radio broadcasts from wartime London

As an historian, Crémieux-Brilhac broke with 'a certain Gaullist tradition by which France freed itself by its own forces,” said his publisher Laurent Theis

Jean-Louis Crémieux-Brilhac was a Jewish member of the French Resistance in charge of propaganda, serving as a director of Free France wartime radio broadcasts from Britain. Later he helped create La Documentation Française, France’s state-run publishing house, and spent time recounting his wartime experiences. In his historical writings he hailed Britain’s help in freeing occupied France.

He was born Jean-Louis Crémieux in the Paris suburb of Colombes into a Jewish family that had lived in south-eastern France for centuries. His code name “Brilhac” was added after he became a resistance fighter. He joined a movement of anti-fascist intellectuals in France in the 1930s.

Captured and sent to Germany, he escaped and fled to the Soviet Union, only to be held as a prisoner there. The German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 led to Soviet co-operation with Charles de Gaulle’s expatriate Free France forces, and Crémieux-Brilhac was released to travel to London, where he became a liaison officer with the BBC.

As an historian, Crémieux-Brilhac broke with “a certain Gaullist tradition by which France freed itself by its own forces,” said Laurent Theis, his publisher with Editions Perrin. “He underlined the decisive contribution of Great Britain and the debt that our country had toward it.” At a colloquium in 2012, Crémieux-Brilhac recounted his efforts in the communication campaigns transmitted from Britain, and how Jean Moulin, giant of the Resistance, called on him in 1942 to set up a secret service that regularly parachuted documents into occupied France.

Jean-Louis Crémieux-Brilhac, French Resistance activist: born Colombes 22 January 1917; died Paris 8 April 2015.