Here’s another story of how a leader of Dutch-Paris recruited someone the line needed for their skills or resources based on his own judgment of the person’s character rather than by referral.

Even though Dutch-Paris counts as a very large resistance network with its 320+ members spread across western Europe, the line never had enough help. There were just so many tasks to be done in so many places. Inevitably many members of the line ended up doing the work of more than one person. But even the most energetic and willing person in Brussels cannot hide a fugitive in southern France.

Dutch-Paris was often short of manpower on the Franco-Swiss border because there were so many fugitives trying to cross that border and because a number of the guides were arrested or had to leave the area under threat of arrest. John Weidner was facing that problem on a day in 1943 when he stopped for dinner at an inn in Les Cruseilles that sat beside a main road from Annecy to the border. Weidner had a family connection to farmers in the village who hid fugitives for him.

On that day the waitress confided in Weidner that her nephew was hiding in the kitchen. He was hiding from the forced labor draft, which meant that he was willing to do something illegal to keep himself out of working in the Third Reich but not much else.

Weidner went to talk to the young man and ended up offering him a job as a guide for Dutch-Paris. The job came with a stipend for young people who had no means of supporting themselves without one. Resisters needed to eat and buy new shoes like everyone else. We can take it for granted that the young man knew the region well enough to act as a guide. He must have impressed Weidner as level-headed and responsible enough to trust with other people’s lives.

Weidner was right. The young man served ably as a guide, escorting fugitives to the border and across it. It wasn’t an especially grueling journey to cross that border, but the fugitives often included children and elderly people as well as city people who didn’t quite appreciate the lengths that strangers were taking to save their lives. Or even why they couldn’t just take a taxi through the regular border posts and on to a hotel in Geneva.

The lesson here is that one of the essential qualities of a successful resistance leader was to be able to judge strangers’ characters in very little time and to act accordingly.