In the summer of 1940 a group of academics and lawyers working in Paris began publishing a clandestine newspaper calling on the French people to resist the German occupation. Members of the Musée de L'Homme group included Germaine Tillion, Pierre Brossolette, Jean Paulham, Boris Vilde, Yvonne Oddon, Pierre Walter, Jules Andrieu, Leon-Maurice Nordmann, Alice Simmonet, George Ithier, Sylvette Leleu, Anatole Lewitsky, Valentin Feldman, Claude Aveline and Jean Cassou. As well as publishing newspapers and leaflets the Group also transmitted political and military information to Britain and helped to hide escaped Allied prisoners of war.

The Musée de L'Homme was infiltrated by a supporter of the Vichy government and as a result virtually all of the members were arrested. Vilde, Lewitsky, Feldman, Walter, Andrieu, Nordmann and Ithier were executed. It is claimed that Feldman shouted at the moment of execution: "Imbeciles, it's for you, too that I die." Women members of the group were sent to concentration camps but Tillion, Oddon, Simmonet, Leleu survived and obtained their freedom in 1945.