Edgard Lévy (4 January 1905 – 14 June 1944) was a French Jewish Resistance fighter during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. He was executed by Germans in 1944.

Life

Lévy was born in

Metz Metz ( , , , then ) is a city in northeast France located at the confluence of the Moselle (river), Moselle and the Seille (Moselle), Seille rivers. Metz is the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Moselle (department), Moselle Departments ...

in 1905 as the son of Émile and Françoise Lévy. He grew up and lived there until the German invasion of France in 1940. The invasion forced the Lévy family to leave Metz. Two years later, in 1942, Edgard joined the "Sixth" branch of the Eclaireuses et Eclaireurs israélites de France resistance group, using the pseudonym "Etienne Sibille." Along with several other people, he worked in the

Limoges Limoges ( , , ; , locally ) is a city and Communes of France, commune, and the prefecture of the Haute-Vienne Departments of France, department in west-central France. It was the administrative capital of the former Limousin region. Situated o ...

area to secure false identification papers for Jews to escape deportation and find places for those hunted by the Nazis to hide. After the

invasion of Normandy Operation Overlord was the codename for the Battle of Normandy, the Allied operation that launched the successful liberation of German-occupied Western Europe during World War II. The operation was launched on 6 June 1944 ( D-Day) with the ...

on 6 June 1944, Lévy and his comrades received orders to join a maquis group. Four days later, he was arrested by Germans in Saint-Flour, along with Raymond Winter and the brothers Marcel and Roger Gradwohl. On 14 June, after a skirmish between German soldiers and resistance fighters that left a high-ranking

Gestapo The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...

officer dead, Lévy, Winter, and the Gradwohl brothers were executed along with twenty-one other non-Jewish civilians. Lévy is memorialized on the stele of the Hôtel Terminus in Saint-Flour, on the war memorial in Ennery, and on a plaque inside Metz's synagogue. He was cited for acts of resistance after his death.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lévy, Edgard 1905 births 1944 deaths People from Metz French Resistance members French Jews who died in the Holocaust French people executed by Nazi Germany