Paul Rassinier was born on March 18, 1906, in Beaumont, a small village near Montb�liard, the son of a farmer. He received his formal education in the schools of the area and passed the necessary examinations which allowed him to teach history and geography at the secondary school level and to use the title of "professor." He taught in the secondary school at Faubourg de Montb�liard where students were prepared to take the "brevet," an examination that is somewhat inferior to that examination which is taken by students in the lyc�es who desire to matriculate at the university. It was at this school that he was arrested by the Gestapo in October 1943. Having joined the Socialist Party, SFIO, in 1934, Paul Rassinier became the head of that party in the Belfort area when the war broke out in 1939. Following the German occupation of France, he participated in the founding of the "Libre Nord" organization which became involved in various forms of "passive resistance," including the smuggling of Jewish refugees over the Franco-Swiss border into Switzerland in cooperation with the Swiss Jewish Committee. Rassinier's activities eventually came to the attention of the German authorities who caused him to be arrested and to be deported to the concentration camp at Buchenwald. Later he was sent to the camp at Dora where he was incarcerated until the end of the war. Upon his liberation in 1945, he returned to France where he was elected to the Assembl�e Nationale as a Socialist deputy. H