Career
Hollard"s efforts included 49 trips smuggling reports to a British attaché in Switzerland. Initially serving in World War I, Hollard subsequently became an engineer and was employed by Maison Gazogène Autobloc, a manufacturer of wood gas generators. Hollard founded AGIR in 1941.
Following his capture in February 1944, he was tortured and imprisoned first at Fresnes Prison and in June 1944 as a forced laborer at the main Neuengamme concentration camp (prisoner "F 33,948").
In 1945, as a result of Swedish intervention Hollard was one of a group of prisoners transferred to the ship Magdalena after being evacuated on April 20 on the prison ship Thielbek. The Thielbek was sunk on May 3 by a Royal Air Force attack on German shipping.
After the war, Hollard "was given the rank of Colonel" and, despite the V-1"s destruction of over 80,000 English houses between June and September 1944, Sir Brian Horrocks called him "the man who literally saved London". A high-speed train that operates Eurostar"s high-speed rail service between Britain, France and Belgium via the Channel Tunnel was named after him.