French Resistance Fighter. He was the son of a history professor, born in the small southern French city of Béziers. He served briefly in the French Air Force during the start of the Second World War. His political career began with a local civil service appointment, then he advanced to the national level. From attachment to the cabinet of the Mayor of Montpellier, he was named sub-mayor of Albertville, then a Popular Front leader, organizing clandestine assistance to the Spanish Republicans fighting against General Franco. Moulin became the Mayor of Aveyron and held the post of Perfect (administrator) for the entire region of Eure-et-Loir at the time of German occupation. He was arrested by the Gestapo and tortured as a suspected communist. Moulin tried to end his ordeal by cutting his own throat. Rushed to a hospital, he survived, but was sacked from his post by the French Vichy government. He then devoted his life to resisting the Germans and their puppets by making contact with various Resistance movements in Southern France. Smuggled out of the country for a meeting with Charles de Gaulle, he was then parachuted back into France with funds for the movement. During a second meeting in London, de Gaulle entrusted him with the task of completely organizing the Resistance, while naming him head of the movement. Upon his return to France, the German occupiers and their Vichy puppets faced a popular organized Resistance, the C. N. R. ( National Council of Résistance). The Gestapo were soon on Moulin's trail. It is known that, betrayed by fellow Frenchmen, he was captured during a trip to Lyon, in a secret meeting at a doctor's house at Caluire-et-Cuire by Klaus Barbie's Gestapo agents. He died under their torture. Steadfastly maintaining his silence, he spent his days enduring interrogation at Gestapo headquarters at the Ecole de Sante Militaire and then was returned nights to Fort Montluc Prison. His arms and legs were broken, as were most of his ribs. Physically depleted, Barbie transferred the broken Moulin to Paris for interrogation by experts. Many inconsistencies surround the death of Moulin during his transfer and final arrival in Paris. A death certificate filed by the Chef of Police indicates Metz, France, while other documents place his death in Frankfurt, Germany. From wherever, his body was supposedly sent to Paris, where it was incinerated at the Pere Lachaise Cemetery crematory and deposited in a numbered urn and stored. During the trial of Klaus Barbie in the late post-war period, he related that he had personally driven the French Resistance leader to Paris and turned him over to expert interrogators because of his inability to secure information. The French settled on Jean Moulin to honor and thus boost their sad collaboration record during the Second World War. They merely accepted the German records as true and removed the urn from Pere Lachaise Cemetery as his and enshrined it in the Paris Pantheon in 1964. No matter who is the occupant of the fabled urn or where the body of Jean Moulin was dumped, he was honored as a revered resistance leader and martyr. More than anything else, he gave the French people back their honor. Jean Moulin never carried a gun, but he made the Resistance by his ability to organize the many factions in occupied France which ultimately played such an important part in the liberation of the country. Jean Moulin is considered the greatest hero to immerge from World War II of any nationality. Town squares all over France have monuments to him. The Jean Moulin Museum in Paris deals with the French Resistance. The Lyon branch of the University of Lyon, one of six branches in France, was renamed Jean Moulin University. Many primary schools, and countless roads and streets are named for him. Even French children were baptized using his name. President Charles de Gaulle praised him extensively in his book, "Memoirs of War."