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Remarkable Heroes and Heroines of the French Resistance in World War II

Khalid Elhassan May 12, 2025 18 min

Resistance - Women and men of the French Resistance — Women and men of the French Resistance. Pegasus Battlefield Tours

20. France’s Youngest Prefect and the Nazis

Jean Moulin was one of the most important French Resistance figures, and remains a symbol of unity, courage, and patriotism in France. Born on June 20^th, 1899, in Béziers, southern France, Moulin came from a politically active republican family. He studied law, became a civil servant, and rose quickly through the ranks to become France’s youngest prefect by age 38. Moulin was the Eure-et-Loir department’s prefect when Germany invaded France in 1940.

Early in the occupation, he was asked to sign a falsified document that blamed French Army Senegalese soldiers for atrocities committed by German soldiers, but refused. For that, he was imprisoned and tortured so badly that he attempted suicide by cutting his own throat with a piece of broken glass. A guard found him and he was taken to a hospital, where he recovered. That left Moulin with a scar that he often hid with a scarf.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.