Israël Carp became the first résistant to die for resistance activities when German authorities shot him dead on the 28th of August 1940. He was a Polish Jewish immigrant who jeered at a German military parade in Bordeaux.
Nine thousand French policemen arrested twelve thousand seven hundred sixty-two Jews throughout Paris and sent them to the Val d'Hiv sports stadium before transferring them to Drancy camp and Auschwitz. Most victims were taken by French police officers working under Vichy authority.
The Service du Travail Obligatoire required able-bodied Frenchmen aged twenty to twenty-two to work in Germany for two years starting on the 16th of February 1943. At least forty thousand French men fled to the countryside rather than report for labor service and became known as maquisards.
Around one hundred thousand fighters belonged to the French Forces of the Interior units in June 1944 growing to four hundred thousand members by October 1944. These paramilitary components formed operational units after Allied landings in Normandy on the 6th of June 1944.
Jean Moulin persuaded three main resistance groups in southern France to unite as the MUR or United Resistance Movement on the 26th of January 1943. He died near Metz train station on the 8th of July 1943 from brain damage after being brutally tortured following his arrest at a secret meeting in Caluire-et-Cuire suburb of Lyon.