Wilhelm Graf (better known as Willi Graf) (2 January 1918 – 12 October 1943) was a member of the White Rose (Weiße Rose) resistance group in Nazi Germany. The Catholic Church in Germany included Graf in their list of martyrs of the 20th century. In 2017, his cause for beatification was opened. Early life Willi Graf was born in Kuchenheim near Euskirchen. In 1922, his family moved to Saarbrücken, where his father ran a wine wholesaler and managed the Johannishof, the second largest banquet hall in the city. Graf attended school at the Ludwigs gymnasium. It was not long before he joined, at the age of eleven, the Bund Neudeutschland, a Catholic youth movement for young men in schools of higher learning, which was banned after Hitler and the Nazis came to power in 1933. In 1934, Graf joined the Grauer Orden ("Grey Order"), another Catholic movement which became known for its anti-Nazi rhetoric. It, too, was banned and for this reason, it formed many splinter youth groups. Graf showed conviction in his beliefs from a young age. Although compulsory at the time, he refused to associate with the Hitler Youth, even when he was threatened with becoming ineligible to go to University unless he joined the Hitler Youth. While other future members of the White Rose initially embraced the Hitler Youth, Graf never did so. Moreover, in his address book he crossed out the names of friends who had joined the Hitler Youth, refusing to associate with them. In 1935, at the age of 17, Graf and a few friends marched in an annual May Day parade. The parade was dominated by swastikas, brown-shirted Hitler Youth troops marching in formation, and "Sieg Heils." However, Graf and his friends marched under their tattered school flag, making great effort to stand out from their peers. They did not don any swastikas, or participate in any of the "Sieg Heil" salutes. While his parents never placed much emphasis on literature and written works (the only books the family owned were religious books), Graf was a voracious reader. Serious and intelligently minded, he enjoyed reading Christian works, with one of his favorite Christian authors being Romano Guardini, one of the leading figures of the liturgical revival of the Catholic Church in Germany. He conducted an in-depth study of Christian authors in his teenage years, with a special focus on works by Romano Guardini.