Marc Boegner was the nephew and disciple of the Lutheran pastor Tommy Fallot, who founded Christian socialism in France.

Poor eyesight was an obstacle to his pursuit of a career within the navy but after a spiritual conversion experience he entered the Faculty for Theology in Paris and in 1905 was ordained a pastor of the Reformed Church of France.

Boegner actively worked, during the occupation, in an open way as well as clandestinely, to try to improve the lot of the Jews, and even defended and saved a number of them.

He intervened with Pierre Laval, in vain, to ask him to give up including Jewish children younger than 16 years in the deportation convoys.

Having met six times, in the middle of his resistance work, Marshal Philippe Pétain, he was decorated with the Order of the Francisque and was named a member of the National Council of Vichy.