Max Barel was born in Menton in 1913, a son of a Deputy. He studies in Nice and enters the most prestigious engineer school in France : l'Ecole Polytechnique. During the war, he becomes a Resistant. Arrested in Lyon and tortured by Klaus Barbie he dies, probably boiled by the Gestapo in St Genis Laval.
The crossroad at the foot of the "Moyenne Corniche" bears his name.