Anna Strasser

Anna Strasser (15 April 1921 – 17 May 2010) was an Austrian resistance activist during World War II who helped forced-labour 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.

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. 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. On 21 September 1944 she was taken from her cell to the police prison, which had by now become a Gestapo centre. She was chained to the wall and was not given food for four days, when a policeman sneaked in some bread. During this time, she reflected and prayed.

On the third day three Gestapo men came to her cell and threatened her, saying they would cut off her hair and confiscated her hairpins, shoelaces, suspenders and bra.