Andre Bollier

Andre Bollier , born on May 30th, 1920 and dead on June 17th, 1944, is resistant French. He integrates the Polytechnic school in 1938. Mobilized in September 1939, it takes part in the engagements in 1940, which is worth to him to be seriously wounded in Alsace on June 21st of this year. Captive fact by the German troops, it is released following the gravity of its wounds and turns over to the Polytechnic school, with Lyon.

In spring 1941, it enters the Résistance thanks to his comrade of promotion to Polytechnique, Jean-Guy Bernard. It initially deals with the distribution of the clandestine newspaper the Small Wings , then, helped by Martinet printing works, is devoted to the manufacture of the newspaper Combat , singularly perilous task because it is one of those which most easily draw the attention of the services of repression, like the Gestapo or the French police force.

André Bollier invents a process of photoengravings which makes it possible to compose the newspaper in Lyon and to print it in several places. He develops a network which counts up to fourteen printing works. To increase pulling further, it changes the Lyons machine in November 1942, then in April 1943, and chooses on these two occasions an apparatus more powerful than the precedent. To buy large quantities of paper without being located, it creates the Bureau of geodetic research and geophysics , as well as a company, which do not have actually any activity. This tireless labor allows the team directed by André Bollier to print, at the beginning of 1944, a clandestine million and half of specimens of Combat and leaflets, which are diffused in the old nonoccupied zone.

March 19th, 1944, Gestapo ends up stopping it. He is tortured and condemned to death, but manages to escape as of on May 2nd. Making a point of continuing the combat, André Bollier takes again his place in the clandestine workshop of printing works. One month later, Gestapo there finds and besieges the workshop, with members of the Milice. Andre Bollier and all the members of his team, except for Lucienne Guzennec, are killed. Itself commits suicide not to fall once again alive to the hands from the enemy and his auxiliaries.

A decree of January 20th, 1946 did of Andre Bollier one of the Companions of the Release, on a purely posthumous basis. A street of Lyon, skirting the National university letters and social sciences, bears its name. A street with Saint Maur of the ditches (94), his birthplace, bears also its name

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