from deportation. The resistance group became later known as the "Community for Peace and Development" (German: "Gemeinschaft für Frieden und Aufbau"). His occupation at the district court gave Winkler the opportunity to organise passports and to issue death certificates of Jews who had been hidden at his and his friends' places. He also had many friends and acquaintances who were willing to provide food stamps and accommodation. Scharff gradually became the head of the organisation which mainly consisted of friends and acquaintances of Scharff and Winkler, of opponents of the Nazi regime, and other like-minded citizens of Berlin-Wedding, Berlin-Mitte, and Berlin-Kreuzberg. Scharff developed new ideas how to distribute chain mails and opposition leaflets and how to recruit new supporters. Together with Winkler he organised the large-scale distribution of their leaflets, in which they appealed to independent thinking, to resistance and to putting an end to the war. Furthermore, they provided shelter to 6–10 persecuted Jews at any time. Scharff and Winkler even contacted inhabitants of the prisoner of war camp Stalag III-A in Luckenwalde, most likely with the goal to ultimately gain access to military arsenal. It was Scharff's dream to free the last Jews that were imprisoned in the prison and detention camp at the Jewish hospital in Berlin. Many, most of all the wife of Hans Winkler, thought that the organisation was acting too reckless. A member of the group, Hilde Bromberg, was indeed arrested in April 1944 after a denunciation by the widow of the executed bookseller August Bonneß, Jr. (1890-1944). Although Bromberg did not reveal the other group members and even managed to lead the Gestapo astray, they eventually tracked down the group and arrested Werner Scharff on October 14, 1944. Scharff was brought to the prison at Alexanderplatz and brutally interrogated. Shortly thereafter, Winkler and many other members of the organisation were arrested as well. By the end of 1944, Scharff was transferred to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. The SS executed him on March 16, 1945. Fancia Grün was executed in the concentration camp as well. Many other members of the community only survived thanks to the end of the war—otherwise they would have faced certain death. References Further reading Eugen Herman-Friede: Für Freudensprünge keine Zeit: Erinnerungen an Illegalität und Aufbegehren 1942–1948. Metropol, Berlin 1991, . (German) Hans-Rainer Sandvoß: Widerstand in Kreuzberg. Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand, Berlin 1997, . (German) Arno Lustiger: Zum Kampf auf Leben und