François Verdier

François Verdier was born on September 7th, 1900 with Lézat-on-Lèze and assassinated by the Gestapo on January 27th 1944.

Biography

Resulting from the good Toulouse middle-class, François Verdier who directs a company of trade of agricultural machinery, is a dignitary Franc-maçon, federal secretary of the Ligue of the human rights when the war bursts, in 1939.

In the years 1940-41, it belonged to several dissenting Toulouse groups before joining Release-South. It takes then the pseudonym of Forain . Regional chief of the WALL for the area R4 (Toulouse), had a presentiment of to be a police chief of the Republic, it is stopped by Gestapo on December 13rd, 1943. Tortured, it seems that he does not speak. Its body is found mutilated close to Toulouse in forest of Bouconne.

He was father of two children.

Commemorations

Two ceremonies proceed each year with its memory:

Sunday which follows on January 27th in forest of Bouconne (Common of Léguevin) on the place where its martyrized body was discovered. Several personalities of resistance or the civil life were invited there for speeches, among which Jean Cassou, the historians Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet.
1st Sunday from September to Lézat-on-Lèze, deposit of sheaf in front of the native house.

To Toulouse, a subway station of the line B, inaugurated on June 30th, 2007, bears its name.

The colleges of Lézat-on-Lèze and Léguevin, the communes where it was born and where it is deceased, bear the name of François Verdier.

Sources

Michel Goubet, “François Verdier” in historical Dictionary of Resistance , under the direction François Marcot, Robert Laffont, 2006

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