The last French Resistance fighter, Hubert Germain, passed away on Tuesday aged 101, according to France's defense minister.

President Emmanuel Macron will preside over a funeral ceremony on November 11, at the Arc de Triomphe and Mont Valerien. 

The Elysee Palace said in a statement that Macron "bows down in front of the life of this figurehead of Free France."

Shocked by French collaborationist leader Philippe Petain's call to lay down arms against the Germans, Germain was inspired by General Charles de Gaulle's call for resistance on June 18, 1940, made from BBC studios in London.

As a member of the French Free Forces and the Foreign Legion, Germain took part in key battle sat Bir-Hakeim in Libya, at El Alamein in Egypt and in Tunisia.

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He also took part in the decisive French-led assault on Mediterranean beaches in August 1944, setting foot on home soil for the first time in years. 

He fought for the liberation of the southern city of Toulon, the Rhone Valley and Lyon in central France, moving to the Vosges mountains and Alsace in the east and ended the war in the southern Alps.

Germain was one of the 1,038 people who received the Order of the Liberation, the highest French bravery award in World War II.

The Order of the Liberation was created by de Gaulle, in November 1940 to "reward persons or military and civilian communities who have distinguished themselves in the work of liberation of France and its empire."

Of the Resistance heroes honoured by de Gaulle, a third died in combat, while 80 percent of the survivors were wounded in action.

The last public appearance of Germain was in June this year at Mont Valérien, a hilltop fortress in a western Paris suburb, which was the main place for the execution of captured Resistance fighters and hostages during World War II.

 The Nazi forces once executed more than 1,000 people there.

The death of Germain reminds France of a sobering chapter in its history – capitulation to the Nazis in 1940 followed by liberation four years later, with Resistance fighters inspired by de Gaulle.

In a poignant coincidence, another 101-year-old survivor of the worst horrors of World War II also passed away just hours later on the other side of the world in Sydney, Australia.

Eddie Jaku endured internment at several concentration camps, where he had the number 72,338 tattooed on his arm.

Despite his past, he published a book called The Happiest Man on Earth, when he was 100 years old.

Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison said, "having survived the Holocaust, Eddie chose to make his life a testimony to how hope and love can triumph over despair and hate … He will be sadly missed."

Cover picture: Michel Euler/Pool/AFP