Käthe Sasso, one of the last survivors of the Austrian resistance against National Socialism, died on Monday night at the age of 98. This was announced by the Second President of the National Council, Doris Bures, in Vienna.
Austria had lost a “freedom fighter and patriot” and she herself had lost a dear friend, Bures said with sadness. Constitutional Minister Karoline Edtstadler (ÖVP) emphasized that Sasso’s wisdom and strength had deeply impressed her. The head of the social democratic SPÖ, Andreas Babler, praised Sasso as an indomitable person who gave a voice to the victims of National Socialism.
As a 15-year-old girl, Käthe Sasso showed a lot of courage and went into the resistance, said Christian Rapp, scientific director at the House of History in the Lower Austria Museum, paying tribute to the deceased. Before she was deported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1944, Sasso was imprisoned in Gestapo prisons in Vienna. She witnessed and suffered from a merciless Nazi justice system, which had around 1,200 people executed with the guillotine in Austria alone.
In the post-war period, Sasso campaigned for the establishment of a memorial for the murdered resistance fighters. As a contemporary witness, she told thousands of young people about the horrors of National Socialism over the decades, said Bures.
