Alain Nègre publishes the memories of his father Maurice Nègre, journalist and resistance fighter, born in 1901 in Saint-Laurent-le-Minier in Cévennes and died in 1985 in Palavas-les-Flots
When his father died, Alain Nègre found some memories written by his father Maurice Nègre, who had not published his memoirs. These few pages are now accessible, put into perspective by his son and they are fascinating. Born in 1901 in Saint-Laurent-le-Minier in the Cévennes, died in Palavas-les-Flots in 1985, Maurice Nègre led a life whose adventures embraced the torments of the century.
As a young journalist, he worked in particular for the Havas agency, directing the offices in Warsaw in Poland, Budapest in Hungary and Bucharest in Romania in the 1930s, where he was stationed when the Second World War broke out. Some espionage activities earned him imprisonment.
Deported to Buchenwald
Back in France, he created Super-Nap, a vast and valuable resistance network which made it possible to spy on ministries and infiltrate senior administrations in Vichy. But he was arrested in 1944, deported to Buchenwald, where he became friends with Marcel Dassault. These pages are among the most poignant. With descriptive words, he recounts this experience with precision and emotion. “The barracks, the call, the work, the call again, the inmate turns in this endless circle, always pressed by the schedule, always locked in barbed wire”he testifies.
On his return from the camps, Maurice Nègre became a journalist again and André Malraux entrusted him with the management of the Agence France Presse, intended to replace the old Havas agency, which became the OFI during the Occupation. In 1943, the National Council of the Resistance decided to entrust him with this responsibility. Despite the political bickering of the Fourth Republic which led to his departures and returns at the head of the institution, he put the agency back on its feet, which regained its international scope before being definitively sidelined in 1954.
In 1965, he decided to return to live in the South, in the family home in Saint-Laurent, then on the shores of the Mediterranean. When leafing through these pages, according to Fabrice Fries, CEO of AFP, “it is difficult not to think of the great travel writers, from Kessel to Malraux, as his journey resembles a romantic saga.”
