French Resistance fighter, literature professor, and author Justus Rosenberg has died at 100, the New York Times reports.

Rosenberg, a native of Poland, was educated as a teenager in France, where he was living when Nazi Germany occupied the city in 1940. He escaped to Toulouse, and then Marseille, where he was recruited into the Resistance by Miriam Davenport, a young American woman who would later become a painter and sculptor.

As a member of reporter Varian Fry’s resistance team, Rosenberg helped hundreds escape from Nazi-occupied France. After the war, he moved to the U.S., where he taught literature at a series of universities including Bard College, where he worked for decades.

In 2020, Rosenberg’s memoir, The Art of Resistance, was published by William Morrow and Company. In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus called the book “a welcome addition to the World War II memoir shelf.”

Rosenberg’s admirers paid tribute to him on social media. On Twitter, author Cari Luna wrote, “Justus Rosenberg, one of my favorite professors in undergrad, and the person who taught me to always keep my back to the wall and the exits in sight, has died. He was wonderful and I’m so lucky to have studied with him.”

“He was truly one of a kind in his generosity of spirit, as a teacher and human being in general,” novelist Mat Johnson tweeted. “A century of lives touched.”

Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.