Maria Stromberger

Maria Stromberg (* 16th March 1898 in Metnitz ( Carinthia ); † 18th May 1957 in Bregenz ) was an Austrian nurse and resistance fighter in the era of National Socialism , which in the Auschwitz concentration camp was used for prisoners.

Life

Maria Stromberger completed a kindergarten teacher training course in 1912, followed by training in agriculture and hotel management. She then worked as a chef at her sister's inn for ten years. After caring for her sick father until he died, she began training as a nurse in the Mehrerau sanatorium in Bregenz, which she completed in Heilbronn.

Maria Stromberger returned to Bregenz in 1937 , where she worked as a nurse. She was then transferred to Königshütte , where she worked from July 1, 1942 in the infection department at the city's infection hospital. There she took care of two former Auschwitz prisoners who were madly reporting about Auschwitz. She volunteered to be transferred to Auschwitz concentration camp on October 1, 1942, on the grounds that: I want to see what it really is like, maybe I can do something good.

From October 30, 1942, Stromberger was employed as head nurse in the SS infirmary . Your superior was the SS medical officer Eduard Wirths . In the infirmary she procured medicine and food for prisoners, hid and cared for the sick, transported illegally post and smuggled information for leaflets from the camp and important utensils, including weapons and ammunition, into the camp for the Auschwitz internal combat group . Several times she narrowly escaped discovery and, through a falsified medical diagnosis, escaped access by the political department of the concentration camp (Gestapo) to a hospital in Berlin at the beginning of January 1945 . From there she was transferred to a neurological ward in a hospital in Prague . After a three-week stay in hospital, she was released to Bregenz. There she experienced the liberation from National Socialism .

After the end of the war, she was held in an internment camp by the French occupation authorities until statements by former Auschwitz prisoners clarified her innocence. In Warsaw in 1947 she testified against the former concentration camp commandant Rudolf Höss . In 1955 she was named the first honorary member of the Federal Congress of the Concentration Camp Association .

From February 1949 she worked as an unskilled worker in a textile factory and lived in Bregenz (Heldendankstrasse 15 - the house still exists (May 2018)) until her death in 1957. Stromberger, who had a heart condition and was marked by the experiences in Auschwitz, died in May 1957 of a heart attack.

She was buried in a cemetery in Aeschach .

Honors

In Bregenz, the Maria-Stromberger-Weg was named in her honor, which runs between the Bregenz State Hospital and the Bregenz School for General Health and Nursing .

literature

• Susan Benedict: Maria Stromberger: a nurse in the resistance in Auschwitz. In: Nursing History Review. 14, 2006, ISSN  1062-8061 , pp. 189-202.
• Hermann Langbein : People in Auschwitz. Ullstein, Frankfurt 1980, ISBN 3-203-50414-6 .
• Harald Walser: The Angel of Auschwitz - On the work of the nurse Maria Stromberger. In: Montfort. Vol. 40, Issue 1, 1988, ISSN  0027-0148 , pp. 70-78, (PDF; 66 kB) .
• Andreas Eder: Maria Stromberger (1898–1957). A biography - In memory of the angel of Auschwitz. Project "Remembering Carl Lampert" - Catholic Church Vorarlberg, Feldkirch o. J., ISBN 3-902221-08-9 , (PDF file; 2.2 MB) .
• Petra Betzien: Nurses in the system of the National Socialist concentration camp. Self-image, professional ethics and service to patients in the prisoner district and the SS hospital . Frankfurt am Main: kula Verlag Edgar Bönisch 2018, ISBN 978-3-945340-11-0 ; Review on hsozkult.de

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hermann Langbein: People in Auschwitz , Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Vienna, Ullstein-Verlag, 1980, p. 518
2. ↑ Article about Maria Stromberger in the Schwäbische Zeitung of January 27, 2017 [1]