Rescuing people from the Nazis and their ilk was dangerous and illegal work. Everything had to be done clandestinely, which meant that the rescuers had to either trust their gut instinct about working with or helping strangers or they had to go by referral. It’s not like they could advertise in the paper and ask for three letters of recommendation.

This fundamental fact of resistance had several consequences. The most dire was that it made resistance networks vulnerable to the enemy. As an example, the Comité was helping a Jewish man hide in Brussels. The man was able-bodied and willing to risk walking through the streets each month to collect the new ration cards and money that his family would use in hiding for the next month.

But one month he and every other pedestrian on the street walked into a trap. The occupation authorities often cordoned off roads or squares to inspect the identity documents of each person they caught. Sometimes they were looking for Jews, sometimes for men under 40 who looked like they might be strong enough for physical labor in the Third Reich, sometimes for particular individuals. Our man was put into a police van along with many others and taken away.

He had seen the faces of members of the resistance network and he knew where their social work HQ was. No one thought that this man would just start blabbing damning information. But he was just an ordinary man who’d been living in an extremely anxious situation for months if not years. And the occupation authorities would stop at nothing to get information out of someone they thought had it. They might torture him. Or threaten his family.

The general rule in resistance organizations was to ask their members to hold out under torture for 24 hours to give everyone else time to get away. Twenty four hours is the most they asked of individuals who had willingly chosen the dangers of resistance. This man had not joined the resistance.

As soon as word came of our man’s arrest, everyone in the social work HQ destroyed any evidence and went into hiding. In this particular case, the Gestapo did not show up. Maybe the man talked his way out of jail – that happened. Or the police didn’t ask him the right questions because that particular unit didn’t care about Jews in hiding. Or maybe they did and he answered out of fear but the police didn’t believe him. Perhaps he displayed admirable courage under torture. We don’t know.

It was a close call that turned out alright. But it was also a warning of the vulnerability of a resistance network that had to involve strangers by the very nature of its work.