"Role model for courage"

Nazi resistance fighter Käthe Sasso has died

Käthe Sasso, one of the last survivors of the Austrian resistance against National Socialism, died at the age of 98.(Bild: APA/HERBERT PFARRHOFER)

"It is with sadness that we have received the news that contemporary witness and resistance fighter Professor Käthe Sasso passed away tonight," announced SPÖ Vienna regional party chairman Mayor Michael Ludwig on Monday. The 98-year-old Viennese dedicated her life to the culture of remembrance.

"With the passing of Käthe Sasso, we are losing a role model for civil courage and courage. We will continue to preserve Käthe Sasso's legacy, as well as that of all other people who survived one of the darkest times in our history, for all future generations and ensure that it remains a living memory," assured Ludwig.

Only a few survivors of the Nazi regime can still speak from their own experience - or tell of those people who were murdered in the Holocaust. Käthe Sasso was one of them. 

Educating people well into old age
Even in old age, she made it her goal to tell as many people as possible about this terrible time. Over the decades, she spoke to thousands of young people about her experiences in the fight against National Socialism.

Resistance fighter Katharina "Käthe" Sasso received the professional title of "Professor" from Werner Faymann (SPÖ) at the Vienna Hofburg in 2016.(Bild: APA/HERBERT PFARRHOFER)

Imprisoned by the Gestapo and sent to a concentration camp
She was born in 1926 and made the courageous decision to oppose the Nazi regime as a teenager. At the age of 15, she joined the Austrian resistance. Shortly afterwards, she was arrested by the Gestapo and transferred to Ravensbrück concentration camp. During the death march to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, she managed to escape and return to Vienna.

Memorial initiated at the Vienna Central Cemetery
As one of the few resistance fighters to have survived, Käthe Sasso spent her life campaigning against forgetting and for the public recognition of resistance fighters executed under National Socialism. She finally succeeded in this with the establishment of a memorial at Vienna's Central Cemetery in 2013 at the place where the executed were buried.