Monaco home and held in the Drancy deportation camp outside the French capital before being transported to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where he was later killed. Blum's colleague Raoul Gunsbourg, the director of the Opéra de Monte-Carlo, helped by the French Resistance, escaped arrest and fled to Switzerland. In August 1944, the Germans executed René Borghini, Joseph-Henri Lajoux and Esther Poggio, who were Resistance leaders. Rainier III, who ruled until 2005, succeeded to the throne following the death of his grandfather, Prince Louis II, in 1949. On 19 April 1956, Prince Rainier married the American actress Grace Kelly; the event was
Monaco succession crisis of 1918 government for US$401 million alleging that France used a "sleight of hand" to deprive Duke Wilhelm II, his ancestor, of the Monacan throne when it passed the 1911 law permitting Charlotte to be considered a Grimaldi. Joseph Valynseele "Rainier III: est-il le souverain legitime de Monaco?" Recueil de l'Office Genealogique et Heraldique de Belgique, XIII (1964), pp. 191–223. Monaco succession crisis of 1918 The Monaco succession crisis of 1918 arose because France objected to the prospect of a German national inheriting the throne of the Principality of Monaco. Prince Albert I had only one legitimate child, the Hereditary Prince Louis,