In Memoriam Käthe Sasso

It was with great sadness that we received the news that Käthe Sasso, resistance fighter and contemporary eyewitness, has passed away at the age of 98.

Käthe Sasso was born in Vienna in 1926. Her parents Johann and Agnes Smudits were active in the resistance against the Nazi regime. Following the death of her mother and after her father was drafted into the German Wehrmacht, Käthe Sasso, at the age of just 16, followed in her parents’ footsteps, taking up their work in the “Gustav Adolf Neustadl” resistance group.

She was denounced to the authorities and subsequently arrested on 21 August 1942. After two years in Austrian prisons and camps, where she was one of the youngest prisoners to experience the brutality of the Nazi penal system, she was deported to Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1944. In April 1945, she managed to escape a death march headed for Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and make her way to Vienna.

Käthe Sasso was married to Josef Sasso, who had also been an active member of the resistance. Throughout her life she was committed to fighting fascism and honouring the memory of resistance fighters and other people who had been politically persecuted by the Nazi regime.

She campaigned for the creation of a memorial to the executed resistance fighters, whose graves are located in Group 40 at Vienna’s Central Cemetery. A national memorial was finally opened there on 11 March 2013. On 27 October 2015, a memorial plaque inscribed with the names of 50 victims of the Nazi penal system was unveiled on the grounds of the “National Memorial to the Victims of Nazi the Nazi Penal System – Group 40”.

In recognition of her dedication, Käthe Sasso was awarded the title of “Professor” and received the “Golden Medal of Merit of the Republic of Austria”. This year, on 12 March, Käthe Sasso received the “Simon Wiesenthal Prize for civic engagement to combat antisemitism and educate the public about the Holocaust”, which she was sadly unable to accept in person.

Hannah Lessing, who shared a longstanding friendship with Käthe Sasso, paid tribute to her as an impressive woman with great strength of character, who had demonstrated enormous courage as a 16-year-old. She was a tireless fighter for democracy, and a role model and dedicated contemporary eyewitness who never tired of sharing her experiences with the next generation.