The first active ‘Résistant’ shot during the Second World War by the German authorities was a Freemason. Brother José Roig was executed at Ivry, 1st August 1941, for supporting, and recruiting for, General de Gaulle and the Free French Government in exile.
    The French Government’s Act of 13th August 1940, which proscribed Freemasonry, led to the dismissal of all Freemasons serving in the Civil Service, Local Government and Teaching. Naturally, this caused much resentment against the Vichy Government and their masters, the occupying Nazi forces. This resentment, coupled with the ideals of Freemasonry – of liberty of speech and thought – could easily be channelled into both active and passive resistance. Furthermore, Freemasonry, with its implicit trust in fellow masons, was already organised into Lodges and "Triangles" of three Brethren (according to French masonic practice), and was thus ideally suited for clandestine activities.
    In addition, many Freemasons had served in the Armed Forces and had returned to civilian life disillusioned with the French Authorities. They felt that the unthinkable collapse of France was the result of poor strategy by the leaders and the low morale of the troops. They were eager to redeem the reputation of France, by combatting the oppressive measures of Vichy and the occupying power. Their specialised knowledge was very useful in intelligence gathering, and organising networks and the necessary administration.
    As the Occupation continued, Freemasons were to be found in almost all the main Resistance networks: Libération, Combat, Franc-Tireur, Marco Polo, Coq Enchâiné, Comète, Atelier de la Bastille, La Bonne Foi and many others.

The Organisation of the Resistance

Though officially dissolved, masonic ideals and beliefs were continued by individuals and small groups of masons. They continued to meet in houses or cafés and as early as the 7th January 1941, one group, foremost amongst whom were Eychène, Kirchmeyer and Bonnard, formed the Grand Conseil Provisoire de la Maçonnerie Française (Provisional Council of French Freemasonry). This was later to become the Comité d’Action Maçonnique or C.A.M.
    Between 1941 and 1944, 211 clandestine masonic lodges were to enter into contact with it. These lodges – sometimes merely ‘triangles’ – were numbered according to the number of their "Départment" plus the number of precedence that they would assume in the "New Freemasonry" after the liberation of France. These 211 lodges encompassed sixty "Départments".1
    It was an energetic ex-officer of eighty years of age, Colonel Eychène, who chose the name Patriam Recuperaré, a lodge and a movement formed almost wholly of Freemasons, which was to become the most famous of the masonic networks. In 1945, Bonnard, one of the founders of the lodge, summed up its raison d’être thus:

In action, Masonry and Resistance became practically synonymous. Men are needed with "le cran courage" of Kipling, himself a mason, expressed in the poem If, ‘Then my son, you are a Man’. Resistance, being a moral virtue, albeit a new one, the ‘morale d’honneur’ becomes a virtue also. To retain one’s dignity and self-esteem, a true mason cannot help but resist. A resistance which ennobles the individual, ennobles also the nation.

Using Kirchmeyer’s flat at 123 rue Saint-Antoine, Paris, as a base, and maintaining contact with London from 1942, the activities of the Resistance groups under Kirchmeyer’s auspices expanded to include non-masons. Their roles were varied: information gathering, propaganda, parachute drops, aiding escaping airmen, refugees, Jews and those avoiding forced labour, clandestine newspapers, forged documents of all types, indeed, they provided all the needs of a clandestine resistance movement.

The Blow Falls

All was proceeding smoothly when suddenly the blow fell: Kirchmeyer was arrested, 3 March 1943. A trap had been set at rue Saint-Antoine and any visitor was taken into custody. Sufficient incriminating documents had been found there to fill two rooms. However, the police, through ignorance or connivance, did not appear over-thorough in searching the innumerable files kept by such a meticulous man. But ample evidence was found to connect Kirchmeyer with being the head and co-ordinator of a vast Resistance network. The punishment was death!
    Under questioning by the infamous Commissaire David, Kirchmeyer admitted the possession of documents of military value and of being a supporter of De Gaulle. David informed him of the seriousness of his position – he was held to be the leader of the Freemason’s network, his second in command being Colonel Eychène.
    Fortunately, by the time the Germans came to take Kirchmeyer to prison, several incriminating documents had mysteriously disappeared. Enigmatically, these were returned to him by the examining magistrate after the Liberation! Kirchmeyer was kept in solitary confinement from April 1941 until 19th January 1944 when he was deported, first to Buchenwald and then to the extermination camp at Mauthausen. Interrogations revealed nothing; he gave nothing away. And he survived to return to France at the end of May 1945.
    Similarly, a search at Colonel Eychène’s house revealed nothing. The Germans disregarded an old man of eighty, yet he was to carry on Kirchmeyer’s work at rue Saint-Antoine with the help of Kirchmeyer’s family. The group ceased all its activities at the end of hostilities after having been one of the most important groups of the Resistance.

Brothers of Resistance

In addition to Patriam Recuperaré, in which Freemasons formed almost the total membership, masons of many lodges were involved in the Resistance as the following extracts from lodge histories reveal:

Loge de L’Enseignement Mutuel

Several Brethren continued to meet secretly in the café "Le Dercy" owned by a Freemason, and all took part in resisting the enemy in some form or another. Their losses were heavy: two Brethren, Jacques Lévy and Brother Blum, were killed in concentration camps whilst Brother Gorwick died in a camp. Brothers Voronoff, Gauthier and Poittevin died in prison; Brother Gosselin fell in action on the Alsace front and Brothers Lacroix and Rogannet fought and were wounded in Paris while evicting the Germans at the Liberation.

Loge Artistes Réunis

Brothers Perrin and Dutreix founded the Resistance network Libération and, with Brother Lemoine, were arrested 17th April 1943. After harsh treatment and torture, Perrin and Dutreix were shot as hostages at Romainville, 2nd October. Lemoine was finally sent to Dora camp where he died from typhus and maltreatment. Another lodge member, Brother Maugenest, died in Buchenwald, 1945; Brother Bonneau, a professor dismissed from his post in accordance with the anti-masonic laws, also died in the same concentration camp.

Loge Etoile Polaire

Of the seven Brethren of this lodge who died as a result of the war, three were beheaded and three died in deportation to German concentration camps.

Other Lodges in the North of France

Brother Louis Lemaire, a high-ranking Freemason, was rather fortunate compared to many of his Brethren. A builder by trade, he hid escaping soldiers in the piles of material in his yard. Inevitably, he was denounced and brought before an elderly German officer. He was asked his age; he realised that he was being asked his masonic age (how long he had been a mason). On giving this information he was dismissed - and given the informant’s name for good measure!
    Brothers Paul Lisfranc ( Lodge Les Philadèlphes and La Lumière du Nord) were shot on 27th December 1943 at Fort Bondues. Brother Raoul François (Lodge Conscience) was shot on 5th April 1944 in the moat of the Citadelle d’Arras. Brother André Serrure (Lodge La Lumière du Nord) was deported to Germany and decapitated at Munich on 28th November 1944 along with eight of his comrades.
    On 3rd May 1942 eighteen members of a Resistance group named Action 40 were arrested. They included two Freemasons, Brothers Guislain and Lavaud, both of Lodge La Fidelité. Twelve were condemned to death - including Brother Lavaud who was decapitated at Dortmund, 10th April 1943. Brother Guislain, after deportation and imprisonment, survived to be repatriated in 1945.

Lodges in the Dauphiné

Two Brethren, Oudinos and Courtot, were shot and twenty other Freemasons from Lodges in the area were killed in concentration camps or in action with the Resistance. Many others were arrested, tortured, or imprisoned, amongst whom were Alix Bertlet and Jean Pain. The latter’s body was found, horribly mutilated, in a ditch. Brother Metral, the Mayor of Viziville, was about to be hanged when he was miraculously saved by a shell-burst from the Allied Forces.
    The above accounts of the part played by lodges in the Resistance reveal the general commitment of Freemasonry in the struggle against oppression. However, the contribution of several individual masons, amongst the many, is worthy of a closer examination.

Masonic Heroes of the Resistance

Pierre Brossolette is such a hero. Born in 1903, he was initiated into Freemasonry in 1927. He returned from the defeat of the French army determined to continue the struggle against the Occupying Power. Unable to obtain a position in Education, he decided to buy a bookshop as a cover for his work in the Resistance. He was an active member of the networks, Musée de l’Homme and Confrèrerie Notre Dame. In 1942 the networks established links with London. His role was to co-ordinate all Resistance movements and to liase with London. He succeeded in sending his family to safety via Gibraltar and made several dangerous trips to London where he broadcast to Occupied France on the BBC World Service.
    On the arrest of Jean Moulin, De Gaulle’s Resistance co-ordinator, Brossolette returned to France to take over Moulin’s role. While he operated under the cover of many aliases, it was when attempting to escape to England that he was arrested in Brittany by the Gestapo for failing to hold the correct pass for the area. At first the Germans did not realise the importance of their prize but once his true identity was known, he was transferred to Gestapo Headquarters in Paris. He was badly tortured and on 22 March 1944, taken from Fresnes Prison to No. 84, Avenue Foch, for further interrogation. He summoned up the strength to throw himself to his death from a fifth floor window. He thus denied the enemy the information in his possession.
    He was awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Croix de la Libération. His citation, signed by De Gaulle himself, read:

An officer possessed of a rare energy and remarkable tenacity. He showed a total disregard for danger and contributed with great success to the organisation of the Resistance in France and to the union of all Frenchmen against the invader.

Another Freemason of note was Martial Brigouleix. Born in 1903, he trained as a teacher but after his Army service in 1940, he was, in 1942, dismissed from his post according to Governmental decree. This unjust dismissal was the spur needed to steer him into the Resistance. However, in 1943, he was denounced and arrested by the Gestapo. In the five and a half months of life which remained to him, he was severely tortured by his captors but none of his colleagues in the Resistance was arrested by the Gestapo from information which he possessed but never revealed. Placed amongst a group of hostages at Romainville, he was shot at Mont-Valérien on 2nd October 1943, in reprisal for a German killed in Paris.
    Rolf l’Hermite and his brother, Serge, returned from military service determined to carry on the struggle against oppression. Quickly, the group of which Rolf was a member, merged with other groups to form the Mouvement National de Résistance, or M.N.R., one of the earliest Resistance networks. Armed groups were organised, links with London were forged, and a clandestine newspaper was published.
    In 1942, the brothers created the movement Milice de la République and later joined with Libération Est and Libération Nord. In 1944 Rolf formed an armed band of some sixty men and went on the offensive against the Germans causing much loss to them in both men and material. Both masons were decorated for their work in the resistance.
    Like many other Freemasons, Georges Lapierre, a respected Headmaster, was dismissed from his post in 1941 at the age of fifty-five years. In 1942, he joined the network C.N.D. Castille. Denounced in 1943, he then travelled a horrific journey from Fresnes prison to the concentration camps of Sachsenhausen, Notzweiler-Struthof and finally to Dachau, where he died on 4th February 1945. Beloved by all who came into contact with him, he devoted his life to helping those in even worse circumstances than himself. Physically weakened by his privations although still strong in mind and spirit, Georges Lapierre became yet another victim of Nazi persecution.

LEST WE FORGET!

1 For more information on the C.A.M., see Historique Sommaire du Groupe de Résistance Patriam Recuperaré, Grand Orient de France.

Dr. Keith Doney is a linguist and historian. His PhD, Freemasonry in France during Nazi occupation and its rehabilitation after the war, was probably the first awarded in England for research into Freemasonry. He is Past Master of Bridge Trust Lodge, Birmingham.