(VOVworld) Raymond Aubrac, Vietnam’s great friend and a major figure of the French Resistance, has died at 97.  

Raymond Aubrac evaded the Nazis in a now-legendary escape led by his wife, Lucie Aubrac. Aubrac and his wife helped set up Liberation South, one of the first networks of the Resistance against the Nazi occupation of France. In 1946, Aubrac met Ho Chi Minh when the Vietnamese revolutionary leader came to France for peace negotiations at Fontainebleau and stayed in Aubrac’s house. During the Vietnam War, Aubrac served as an intermediary between Ho Chi Minh and Western leaders such as US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and joined a group of intellectuals and scientists working to end the war.

In 1975, while working on rebuilding projects in Vietnam, Aubrac witnessed the fall of Saigon. Three years later, he joined UNESCO, the UN cultural agency, to work on cooperation projects. In the 1960s, he worked at the UN Food and Agricultural Organization. Raymond Aubrac was awarded with the Friendship Order and Ho Chi Minh Order by the Vietnamese State.