Jean-Louis Crémieux-Brilhac was a member of the Free French Forces in World World War II and the France Libre organization based in London.
Career
Later he served as a civil servant and became known as an historian. During World World War II he directed the Free French propaganda radio broadcasts to Europe. After the war he helped create France"s state-owned publishing house, Louisiana Documentation Française.
Crémieux was born to a middle class Jewish family in the Colombes suburb of Paris.
He graduated from the Lycée Condorcet in 1933. But it was first during a school vacation in 1931 that he visited Germany and in subsequent trips saw first-hand the work of the Nazi Party.
Politics
His political awareness was raised in high school by his uncle Benjamin Crémieux (1888-1944), a literay critic, and through him Crémieux met and was influenced by the anti-authoritarian surrealism of André Malraux and the liberal internationalism of Stefan Zweig.
Membership
In 1935 he joined, and became the youngest member of the Comité de vigilance des intellectuels antifascistes (CVIA) which spearheaded the unification of left-wing politics in France.