In his lifetime, Michel Fougeres, an associate professor emeritus of French at Carnegie Mellon University, could regale listeners with stories of trying to stay alive in Nazi Germany, fighting for the French in Indochina and sharing his knowledge of world history.

“He was a raconteur,” said his son Michel of St. Petersburg, Fla., using the French term for storyteller to describe his Paris-born father. “He entertained in any setting, whether it was academic or social. … You could name a civilization or era in world history, he could pretty much tell you what was going on.”

Mr. Fougeres, 90, of Squirrel Hill died Sunday at Forbes Hospice at West Penn Hospital.

Mr. Fougeres was orphaned at an early age and, as the son of a Dutch mother who was Jewish, found himself as a young man trying to stay alive in World War II by driving trucks for the Germans throughout Europe.

After the war, he returned to Paris and served in Indochina for the French Colonial Army from 1946 to 1948. When he returned to Paris, he was so upset about what he had seen that he began writing under a pen name, denouncing what he saw as French atrocities. He ultimately moved to Israel, back to Paris and then, in the early 1950s, on to New York City, where he started a new life.

In the U.S., he served as a photographer for the Army and became a naturalized citizen in Honolulu.

In 1969, a few years before he earned his doctorate at New York University, he came to CMU to teach French and French literature. There he met his wife of 44 years, Regine Dalchow Fougeres, who was born in Berlin and taught Russian at CMU.

“He had a very close relationship with many students,” Mrs. Fougeres said. “They thought he was an entertaining professor.”

Christian Hallstein, a teaching professor of German who joined the CMU faculty in 1979, said Mr. Fougeres developed a self-paced French program of studies in which students could learn French independently and meet individually with him. He said Mr. Fougeres had as many as 50 independent study students enrolled at a time along with traditional classroom students.

“He was an interesting guy. He had a very heavy accent, had very thick glasses, was outgoing and personable. The students liked him,” Mr. Hallstein said.

Mr. Fougeres wrote French literary criticisms and a couple of books, including one in French called “Cho’Quan” about the hallucinations he experienced in Indochina after stepping on a spike and contracting gangrene, said his son Dorian of Encinatas, Calif.

In addition to history and literature, he enjoyed classical music and German and French cinema.

He and his family also traveled in Europe, repeatedly visiting Germany, France and Belgium.

In addition to his two sons and wife, Mr. Fougeres is survived by a brother, Henri Saunier in Paris, and two grandchildren.

He was buried Tuesday. Arrangements were by John A. Freyvogel Sons Inc.

First Published: November 20, 2014, 5:00 a.m.