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| - Three prominent former members of the French resistance that fought the German occupation in World War II have died in France in their 90s of COVID-19, memorial associations have announced. Henri Ecochard,96, Frida Wattenberg, 95, and Rafael Gomez Nieto, 99, had all played important but quite different roles i`n the resistance movement that defied the odds to carry on fighting the Nazis. Ecochard was a member of the Free France and its Free French Forces (FFL) under Charles de Gaulle, serving in the Middle East and then Tunisia before joining an artillery regiment in 1944. In retirement, he compiled a comprehensive list of all the former members of Free France, known to historians as the "Ecochard list," and shared his experiences with schoolchildren. His death from COVID-9 was confirmed by the Free France Foundation on its Facebook page. Frida Wattenberg meanwhile died on April 3, just a few days short of her 96th birthday, the Shoah memorial announced. Born in 1924 to a family originally from Poland, Wattenberg became active as a teenager from 1940, pasting up posters at school urging people to join the resistance. In 1943, she left Paris for the southeastern city of Grenoble, which was then under Italian occupation, to join the Jewish resistance. She helped lead groups of children over the border to the safety of Switzerland and later joined the Jewish Army (AJ), a resistance group set up in Toulouse. After the war, she worked for an organisation helping orphaned Jewish children whose parents had been killed, as well as recounting her experiences for the next generation. Rafael Gomez Nieto, the last survivor of the "Nueve" (The Ninth), the first column composed mainly of Spanish Republicans that entered Paris on August 24, 1944, died of COVID-19 on March 31 aged 99 in Strasbourg, his family said last week. "He was the symbol of the Nueve, and with him departs a part of the history of the liberation of Paris and the Spanish Republicans," said the historian Evelyn Mesquida, who had regular contacts with him. Until his death, Nieto still had "strength and memory" and was still doing his shopping in a car a few weeks ago, she said. In a statement, the Elysee Palace said that President Emmanuel Macron saluted the memory of this "hero of liberty." The coronavirus epidemic has killed more than 8,000 people in France, even if the daily toll has dropped slightly in recent days. vl-sjw/js/wdb
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