The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
French Resistance hero Daniel Cordier dies at 100
He was right- hand man of legendary leader Jean Moulin.
Aged 19 and about to join the French army to fight the Nazi invaders, Daniel Cordi er heard on the radio in June 1940 that France’s military head of state, Marshal Philippe Pétain, had capitulated to the Germans.
“I naively thought, as my parents did, that Pétain was going to launch France’s victorious counteroffensive,” Cordier recalled in a 2010 interview with the public radio channel France Culture. “Instead, he announced the end of the fighting, that is to say the end of hope. I burst into tears, went up to my room and sobbed.” Then he regrouped.
Cordier became a key member of the French Resistance, helping coordinate and unify the disparate guerrilla groups who set out to attack Nazi trains and bases to weaken, confuse and distract them in the run- up to the 1944 Allied landings at Normandy. After the war, he became a leading modern art gallery owner in Paris as well as a prolific author on his wartime experiences.
Cordier died Nov. 20 at 100 at his home near Cannes, in southern France, of unspecified causes, according to a statement by French President Emmanuel Macron. On Thursday, the country paid tribute to Cordier in ceremonies led by Macron, who in 2018 awarded Cordier the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, the highest level of that prestigious national order.
In addition to 100- year- old Hubert Germain, Cordier was the last surviving resistance fighter of the 1,038 — including six women — honored by resistance l eader Gen. Charles de Gaulle at the end of World War II with the title Companion of the Liberation.
Cordier was best- known as the personal secretary and right- hand man of legendary resistance leader Jean Moulin, who had served as first president of the National Council of the Resistance. In that role, Moulin pulled t ogether French patriots from all walks of life — and from far right to communist — to disrupt the Nazis and support the Allies before, during and after the D- Day invasion on June 6, 1944.
Based in the city of Lyon, Moulin was the senior on- theground resistance member appointed by de Gaulle from his exile headquarters in London. Although he carried a pistol and dagger while on the streets, Cordier’s main task was to code and decode radio messages between London and Lyon, some of them via the BBC Radio World Service.
Cordier waited until age 89 to come out as gay, around the time he published an award-winning memoir, “Alias Caracalla.”
In his later years, he dedicated his life to writing about Moulin. He bought a camper van and toured places where his old boss had worked in French civil administration before the war, gathering documents, letters and manuscripts along the way. He published well- received volumes on Moulin.
In the 1960s, Cordier adopted an orphaned teenager, Hervé Vilard, who had moved among foster homes after living on the streets of Paris. Hervé, who became a pop singer in France and is now 74, survives him.