Let’s dive deeper into the factors that shaped the practical realities of a resister’s daily life. We’ll start with what sort of illegal work an individual was doing. Broadly speaking you can break down resistance work into four large categories: armed resistance (sabotage, partisan battles); intelligence work (gathering information); welfare (hiding people, supporting the needy such as the children of deported Jews or resisters, escape lines); intellectual (political, spiritual, the clandestine press).

All resisters faced some of the same problems. For example, what they were doing was illegal and carried severe penalties if they were caught. They all needed false identification documents. They all had to be careful about who saw what they were doing and they all carried an extra burden of anxiety and fear.

But there were differences. Members of the armed resistance carried weapons, which put them in a different category in the eyes of the occupation forces. They often lived in remote places such as camps in the forest or mountains which would make getting supplies difficult and the winter’s cold and wet. They were also cut off from their families.

Individuals who worked for the clandestine press in all its forms tended to live in cities and for the most part they could live at home. The most dangerous jobs were running the presses, which were loud and therefore easily tracked, and delivering the clandestine news or books. Also, many clandestine newspapers relayed the news from the BBC or Swiss Radio. It was illegal to listen to either one, so that also carried a risk.

Intelligence work varied greatly. It could mean living a double life as a spy in a German office, which would have been nerve-wracking at the very least. It could also mean observing troop movements from your apartment window and passing them on to a contact in the network who took care of getting the information to the Allies. The lifestyle depended entirely on the particular job.

Welfare work sounds pretty boring but it was actually very complicated and rather dangerous. The workers dealt with a lot of people and could not control their environment because a lot of the time they were helping strangers. Those strangers sometimes did not understand that their behavior was risking everyone’s safety or they did not have the nerve to bluff their way through an unexpected encounter with police. Also welfare workers had to keep going out in public no matter what was happening on the streets because people depended on them for rations, money and shelter. Also, they often carried compromising things like large rolls of cash and false documents for various people.

Other people in welfare work stayed in their homes and their lives but made room for strangers to hide in their homes indefinitely. Sometimes the hosts and guests did not get along, making the situation much harder on everyone. Hosts had to worry about being betrayed by neighbors or the thoughtlessness of their guests. They also had extra work to do to feed their guests. A host could not suddenly show up at the usual grocers with ration coupons for seven people when the grocer knew they only had four people in the family. So the host would have to queue for four rations at that grocer and then go across town to a new neighborhood and queue again for the other three rations. They would have to do all their guests’ errands, which often meant standing in even more lines to get whatever the guest needed.

Next time, going underground vs. working from home.