• A non-violent, intellectual resistance group in Nazi Germany led by a group of students
and a professor at the University of Munich, founded in June 1942
• The group included Hans Scholl, Sophie Scholl, Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell,
Traute Lafrenz, Willi Graf, and Jugen Wittenstein. Most of the men were in the German
Army but were at the university being trained as doctors.
• To keep secrecy, membership of the White Rose movement was extremely small. It
produced anti-war leaflets that were also deemed to be anti-Nazi. They were typed single-
spaced on both sides of a sheet of paper, duplicated, folded into envelopes with neatly
typed names and addresses, and mailed as printed matter to people all over Munich.
• Most of the leaflets were received by academics, civil servants, restaurateurs and
publicans
The Maquis
• The Maquis were rural guerrilla bands of French Resistance fighters, called maquisards,
during the Occupation of France in World War II.
• The French Resistance played a significant role in facilitating the Allies' rapid advance
through France following the invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944, and the lesser-known
invasion of Provence on 15 August, by providing military intelligence on the German
defences known as the Atlantic Wall and on Wehrmacht deployments and orders of battle
• Also publishers of underground newspapers, providers of first-hand intelligence
information, and maintainers of escape networks that helped Allied soldiers and airmen
trapped behind enemy lines.
• The Resistance also planned, coordinated, and executed acts of sabotage on the
electrical power grid, transport facilities, and telecommunications networks.
Irene Sendlerowa
• Irene defied the Nazis and saved 2,500 Jewish children by smuggling them out of the
Warsaw Ghetto. As a health worker, she sneaked the children out between 1942 and
1943 to safe hiding places and found non-Jewish families to adopt them.
• Some children were taken out in gunnysacks or body bags. Some were buried inside
loads of goods. A mechanic took a baby out in his toolbox. Some kids were carried out in
potato sacks, others were placed in coffins, some entered a church in the Ghetto which
had two entrances. One entrance opened into the Ghetto, the other opened into the Aryan
side of Warsaw.
• But the Nazis became aware of Irena's activities, and on October 20, 1943 she was
arrested, imprisoned and tortured by the Gestapo, who broke her feet and legs.
• Irena Sendler did not think of herself as a hero. She claimed no credit for her actions. "I
could have done more," she said. "This regret will follow me to my death."