French resistance hero Raymond Aubrac dies aged 97 Raymond Aubrac with his wife Lucie in 1987. France is mourning the death of Raymond Aubrac, one of its last great resistance heroes, whose bravery and exploits with his wife, Lucie, against the Gestapo became the stuff of legend and film. Aubrac, who died in the Val de Grace military hospital in Paris aged 97 on Tuesday evening, was, along with his late wife, one of the leading figures in the underground resistance movement. He was a Grand Officer of the Légion d'Honneur, held the Croix de Guerre and Rosette de la Résistance, and was one of only around 20 surviving members of the Compagnons de la Libération. He remained politically active to the end, visiting schools and colleges to talk about his wartime experiences. The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, paid tribute to "a heroic figure of the resistance." These quiet heroes who saved the honour of France at a moment when she seemed lost are dying, one after the other. We have a duty to keep their memory alive at the heart of our collective remembrance," Sarkozy said in a statement. The Socialist presidential candidate, François Hollande, whom Aubrac openly supported before his death, said: "In the most sombre periods of the history of our country he, with Lucie Aubrac, was one of the righteous who discovered in themselves and in the melting pot of universal values that is our republic the force to resist Nazi barbarity." Aubrac was born Raymond Samuel just before the outbreak of the first world war into a family of Jewish shopkeepers, on the day the French Socialist leader and celebrated pacifist Jean Jaurès was assassinated, on 31 July 1914. After studying for a law degree, then a master's degree in science from Harvard, he was engaged in military service as an engineering officer on the Maginot line when the second world war broke out. His parents, Albert and Hélène Samuel, were deported from France and died in the Nazi concentration camps. After marrying Lucie, whom he had met as a student in Paris, in December 1939, both joined the French resistance using the pseudonym Aubrac. Raymond Aubrac was involved in creating one of the eight movements that made up the National Resistance Council. The main activity of the movement was to publish a secret newspaper called Libération, the forerunner of today's daily publication. Aubrac was arrested in June 1943 at Caluire, near Lyon, with Jean Moulin, head of the French National Resistance Council, and 12 other fighters. He was interrogated and tortured by the notorious head of the Gestapo, Klaus Barbie - nicknamed the Butcher of Lyon. Moulin died after torture. In an interview with Paris Match in 1983, Aubrac recounted Barbie's pleasure at making his victims suffer. I had the impression that he wasn't really interested in the answers of the questions he was asking. His pleasure was to feel his power, his force, by torturing. Aubrac was freed, four months later, when Lucie led a daring commando raid on a lorry moving him and other resistance members from jail in Lyon. The episode was later made into a film. Hunted by the Gestapo, the couple fled for London, from where Aubrac travelled to Algeria. After the war, he became regional commissioner of the Republic at Marseille, responsible for de-mining the coastal area, before taking up the national post of inspector general for reconstruction. Serge Klarsfeld, a lawyer and president of the Association of Boys and Girls of the Deported Jews of France, saluted the "last great witness" of the resistance. "They were extraordinary people," Klarsfeld said. Lucie, also hailed as a resistance hero, died in 2007 at the age of 94. The couple had three children and 10 grandchildren. In an interview in Le Monde in March last year, Raymond Aubrac said the decision he was most proud of was choosing his partner. "You know," he said, "in life there are only three or four fundamental decisions to make. The rest is just luck.