His father, Leon Zay, descended from a Jewish family from Metz, but was born and died in Orléans, where he was the director of a radical socialist regional newspaper, Le Progrès du Loiret.

[1] In 1938, Jean Zay proposed the creation of an international film event in France, which was planned to debut in Cannes in 1939.

After the invasion of France by Nazi Germany in 1940, he was one of the passengers aboard the vessel Le Massilia that left from Bordeaux bound for Casablanca on 21 June 1940, with the intention of forming a resistance government in North Africa.

A press campaign, organised by Philippe Henriot, the minister of information in the Vichy government, called for his execution for being "Jewish, freemason and member of the Radical Party",[4][5] and pointing to his anti-war poem of March 1924, Le Drapeau (The Flag), as evidence of his lack of patriotism.

In October 1940, Zay was put on trial by the Vichy regime at the courthouse in Clermont-Ferrand for desertion after he boarded the liner SS Massilia for Casablanca in Morocco to continue the fight against the Nazis.

He was removed from the prison by three miliciens on 20 June 1944, Henri Millou, Charles Develle and Pierre Cordier, purportedly so he could be transferred to Melun.

The surviving milicien Charles Develle was convicted of Zay's murder in February 1953, and sentenced to forced labour for life, but released in 1955.

In March 2014, French President François Hollande announced his intention to recognize Jean Zay at the Panthéon in Paris as a leading figure in the Resistance, along with Pierre Brossolette, Germaine Tillion, and Geneviève de Gaulle-Anthonioz.