01/01/2026
Take the time to read this...as a 76-yr-old lifetime Girl Scout, I had no idea this happened. Bravo, Lily! We can't let the past die. This should be shared everywhere, especially now, in this political time of deleting everything they can that represents the past.
Marianne Squillace Law
Thank you for sharing, Nancy Johnsen!
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Upper Burrell, Pennsylvania.
Lily Sassani knew what it felt like to be the only one.
The only Jewish face in her classroom. The only one who understood what the High Holidays meant. The only one carrying both pride and isolation.
She was also a Girl Scout.
When it came time to choose her Gold Award project—Girl Scouting's highest honor, requiring 80+ hours of leadership—Lily wanted to create something that bridged both parts of her identity.
Something that would honor her heritage while serving her community.
She kept thinking about a question that haunted her: What happened to Girl Scouts and Girl Guides during the Holocaust?
The question led her to Janie Hampton's book "How the Girl Guides Won the War."
What she discovered there changed everything.
Because the story of Girl Scouts and Girl Guides during World War II wasn't just a footnote. It was extraordinary.
In the United States, Girl Scouts mobilized for the war effort on a massive scale. They sold war bonds to fund the fight against fascism. They planted victory gardens. They collected scrap metal that would be melted down for weapons and silk stockings that would become parachutes. They served as hospital aides, farm workers, bicycle couriers.
Teenage girls doing the work of a nation at war.
But in Europe, Girl Guides faced something far darker—and responded with even greater courage.
During the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Girl Guides smuggled Jewish children out of the ghetto.
They hid them with Polish families. Forged documents to give them new identities. Risked ex*****on every single time.
During the London Blitz, Girl Guides ran toward exploding incendiary bombs—not away from them.
They climbed onto rooftops to extinguish bombs before they could ignite entire city blocks. Teenage girls armed with buckets of sand, saving London one rooftop at a time.
And in Ravensbrück concentration camp—the N**i camp designed specifically for women—a secret Girl Guide unit did something the SS never discovered.
They kept records.
While the N**is tried to erase evidence of their crimes, these imprisoned Girl Guides secretly documented who lived and who died. They created one of the only chronicles of what happened inside Ravensbrück, preserving the names and stories the N**is wanted erased forever.
They were starving, terrified, surrounded by death.
And they chose to bear witness.
Lily read these stories and realized: almost no one knows about this.
Holocaust education focuses on the camps, the ghettos, the six million murdered. Rightfully so.
But the stories of young women's resistance—the Girl Guides who fought back, who saved lives, who documented atrocities—those stories had been buried.
She decided to change that.
Lily spent two years creating a comprehensive Holocaust Education Patch and curriculum specifically for Girl Scouts.
She partnered with the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh, which connected her directly with author Janie Hampton. Together, they developed a program that tells the stories of girls and young women whose wartime contributions have been forgotten.
The curriculum doesn't shy away from the horror. But it also doesn't leave Scouts feeling helpless.
It shows them what courage looked like at their age. What resistance looked like. What refusing to be a bystander looked like.
In 2024, Lily completed her Gold Award project.
The Holocaust Education Patch is now available to Girl Scout troops across the United States.
Thousands of girls—many of them the same age as the Girl Guides who fought N**is in Warsaw, who extinguished bombs in London, who kept records in Ravensbrück—are learning this history.
"I hope my patch touches a lot of people," Lily said. "It tells stories of the Holocaust specific to the experiences of women, children, and affected civilians across the world as a whole, which I don't think a lot of schools talk about."
She's right. Most schools don't.
But now, in troop meetings across America, girls are pinning on a patch that honors the teenage resisters who came before them.
They're learning that Girl Scouts aren't just about cookies and camping—they're part of a legacy of courage that stretches back to the darkest chapter of human history.
They're learning what their predecessors did when the world needed them.
And they're learning what they themselves might be capable of.
Lily Sassani was the only Jewish student in her community. She felt alone.
So she created something that ensures the Girl Guides who resisted the N**is will never be alone in history again.
Their stories are being told. Their courage is being honored. Their legacy is being passed to a new generation.
Because one 18-year-old girl decided that forgotten heroes deserve to be remembered.
