He was executed in Sachsenhausen concentration camp because of his activities in the "Community for Peace and Development" (German: "Gemeinschaft für Frieden und Aufbau"), which he founded together with Hans Winkler in Luckenwalde.

Werner Scharff was full of ideas how to actively encourage other citizens to passive resistance against the Nazis, but he needed people to help him.

Together with Günter Samuel and Erich Schwarz, Winkler had already been operating a loose resistance group since before the outbreak of the war to help saving Jews from deportation.

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.

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.

[5] GFA instead sent Goldschlag a fake death sentence written on official court document paper and informed her that if she was seen on the streets [after the war] by one of their agents she would be killed instantly.

[6][7] Even if the threat was only for intimidation it was seen as a valid one and Goldschlag's superior pulled her and the other members of the Search Service from the streets for two weeks and later issued them with pistols for protection.

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).