Anna Strasser (15 April 1921 - 17 May 2010) was an Austrian resistance activist during World War ll who helped forced labor and concentration camp victims until her arrest in 1944.
She was interned and interrogated in a concentration camp and prisons, followed by time in a labour camp.
Early life
Early years
Anna Strasser was born in St. Valentin, a small country town near Linz, Austria. She was the twelfth of her parents' children and had two half-siblings from her father's first marriage.
Her father, Johann Strasser, worked for an insurance company and died in 1938. After his death, her mother took on her husband's job at the insurance agency while her eldest stepdaughter took charge of the family shop. At the age of seventeen, Strasser started an apprenticeship in Linz in the support office of a medical doctor.
On her eighteenth birthday in 1939, Strasser began working in the bookkeeping department at the warehouse depot of an agricultural co-operative in Mauthausen.
World War II
Resistance Work
The agricultural co-operative Strasser worked at was required to provide produce to the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp. Some SS officers reportedly boasted to Strasser about their killings of inmates.
One very young SS member came into pay the bills who seemed to have been profoundly traumatised by what he had seen. Strasser told the man that he should place himself "on the side of the good ones", and use his position to the benefit of inmates. The two shook hands and the man left; Strasser never saw him again, but often prayed for him.
Food Supplies
The depot was close to the camp and Strasser started taking a walk past the camp during her lunch-break. She began carrying basic supplies with her, such as bread, sugar, biscuits, sewing needles, twine and buttons. Sometimes she dropped them where inmates might find them, and inmates learned to watch for her lunchbreak walks. On one occasion she received a letter of gratitude that the inmates had managed to send using the postal service.
The store manager, Franz Winklehner, began purchasing maize, turnips, cabbage and potatoes from farmers making deliveries to the depot, exchanging them for fertilizers and settling the balance. He sometimes threw bread and cigarettes to newly arrived detainees being transported past his office, to the camp. Winklehner's home was in the same building as the co-operative offices. One evening towards the end of 1940 the Winklehners received a visit at home from two Gestapo men and he was taken to Linz for questioning and then taken to the Dachau concentration camp. On 26 February 1941 his wife received a letter in which he wrote that he would probably be released in a couple of months in an amnesty to be announced in celebration of Hitler's birthday. However, this did not come to be, as news later came that he had died, allegedly of "circulatory disorders". Strasser accompanied his widow to see his body.
In 1942 Strasser was recruited to work in the vast new Nibelungenwerk (factory) at nearby Herzograd (administratively part of St. Valentin), where Tiger Tanks were being produced by a workforce that would eventually reach approximately 15,000. Strasser worked at the plant until her arrest in September 1944. She was assigned to the accounts department where she would look out of the windows, and see prisoners from Mauthausen (who had been conscripted as forced labourers to work at the plant) being beaten to death. One day she collapsed and wept uncontrollably for a sustained period which led to her being placed on sick leave. After being seen by a specialist doctor she was assigned to work mornings only.
Medical Supplies
At this time, large numbers of Jewish families arrived at the nearby Windberg camp from Hungary. Each day they were driven past the Strasser family's shop to the sports fields behind the house, where they were tasked with building bunkers. They were mostly former office workers who needed help with the physical work. One of the detainees was a doctor who repeatedly visited the shop and took the opportunity to push notes to Anna’s sister Maria begging for certain specified drugs and medications. Strasser began visiting Dr. Kleinsasser, the local railway doctor, who although a party member, was sympathetic to her cause. Strasser persuaded the doctor wrote out the necessary prescriptions, identifying her as the patient and she took the prescriptions to various pharmacies across six local towns, in order to avoid triggering suspicion. After dark she took the medications to the sports fields and left them in pre-agreed locations. Sometimes she set off the barking of dogs, but she was never caught.