Irma Schwager | |
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| Born | Irma Wieselberg [1] 31 May 1920 |
| Died | 22 June 2015 (aged 95) Vienna, Austria |
| Nationality | Austrian |
| Occupation(s) | Resistance fighter, politician and philanthropist |
Irma Schwager (31 May 1920 - 22 June 2015) was an Austrian-Jewish anti-fascist resistance fighter and politician.
Schwager was born on 31 May 1920 in Vienna, Austria. [1] Schwager was forced to flee Austria in 1938 to Belgium and again to France in May 1940. After arriving in France, she was sent to Gurs internment camp before joining the French resistance. [2] [3] She was stationed in Paris and convinced German soldiers to turn against the Nazis [4] [5] before traveling to Belgium after the Liberation of Paris in 1944, to help found the Österreichische Freiheitsfront (Austrian Freedom Front). In early 1945, Schwager returned to Austria with her husband Zalel Schwager (1908-1984), a fighter of Spanish Civil War, and their daughter born during the war. She found that her parents and two brothers had been murdered in the Holocaust. [2]
She joined the Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ) after the Second World War and became a politician. She became a member of the central committee in 1953, was a member of the political office of the KPÖ between 1980 and 1990, and was elected honorary chairman of the party in 2011. [2] Schwager advocated pacifism and protested the use of nuclear power. She was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. [1]
In January 2015, Schwager made a speech in Vienna to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp. [4]
Schwager died on 22 June 2015. [6]
Margarete "Grete" Lihotzky was an Austrian architect and a communist activist in the Austrian resistance to Nazism. She is mostly remembered today for designing what is known as the Frankfurt kitchen.
The Communist Party of Austria is a communist party in Austria. Established in 1918 as the Communist Party of German-Austria (KPDÖ), it is one of the world's oldest communist parties. The KPÖ was banned between 1933 and 1945 under both the Austrofascist regime and the Nazi German administration of Austria after the 1938 Anschluss. It played an important role in the Austrian resistance against the Nazis.
The Austrian resistance launched in response to the rise of the fascists across Europe and, more specifically, to the Anschluss in 1938 and resulting occupation of Austria by Germany.
Resistance movements during World War II occurred in every occupied country by a variety of means, ranging from non-cooperation to propaganda, hiding crashed pilots and even to outright warfare and the recapturing of towns. In many countries, resistance movements were sometimes also referred to as The Underground.
The history of the Jews in Austria probably begins with the exodus of Jews from Judea under Roman occupation. There have been Jews in Austria since the 3rd century CE. Over the course of many centuries, the political status of the community rose and fell many times: during certain periods, the Jewish community prospered and enjoyed political equality, and during other periods it suffered pogroms, deportations to concentration camps and mass murder, and antisemitism. The Holocaust drastically reduced the Jewish community in Austria and only 8,140 Jews remained in Austria according to the 2001 census, though other estimates place the current figure at 9,000, 15,000, or 20,000 people, if accounting for those of mixed descent.
José Aboulker was a French Algerian Jew and the leader of the anti-Nazi resistance in French Algeria in World War II. He received the U.S. Medal of Freedom, the Croix de Guerre, and was made a Companion of the Liberation and a Commander of the Légion d'honneur. After the war, he became a neurosurgeon and a political figure in France, who advocated for the political rights of Algerian Muslims.
Hermann Langbein was an Austrian communist resistance fighter and historian.
Heinrich Maier was an Austrian Roman Catholic priest, pedagogue, philosopher and a member of the Austrian resistance, who was executed as the last victim of Hitler's regime in Vienna.
Austria was part of Nazi Germany from 12 March 1938 until 27 April 1945, when Allied-controlled Austria declared independence from Nazi Germany.
Rose Warfman was a French survivor of Auschwitz and member of the French Resistance.
The Österreichische Freiheitsfront was an antifascist organization created by Austrian and German communist refugees in Brussels and Paris during the Second World War occupation of Belgium and France by Nazi Germany. It took an active part in the Belgian and French Resistance.
Hilde (Wundsam) Zimmermann, was a member of the Austrian Resistance. Arrested for her efforts to fight fascism, she was deported with her mother and childhood friend by Nazi officials to the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany; she then went on to survive both her imprisonment there and a death march.
The International Federation of Resistance Fighters – Association of Anti-Fascists also known by its French initials FIR is an organization of veterans of the anti-Axis resistance fighters, partisans, members of the anti-Hitler coalition. During the Cold War, the work of the FIR was closely connected with issues of peace, disarmament, understanding and cooperation of countries of different political systems. The FIR gave the former resistance fighters a voice against the policy of military confrontation and the real threat of war. Member organizations in West and East took numerous initiatives to end the policy of confrontation.
The following lists events that happened during 2015 in the Republic of Austria.
Etta Federn-Kohlhaas or Marietta Federn, also published as Etta Federn-Kirmsse and Esperanza, was a writer, translator, educator and important woman of letters in pre-war Germany. In the 1920s and 1930s, she was active in the Anarcho-Syndicalism movement in Germany and Spain.
Ottilie "Tilly" Spiegel was an Austrian political activist, first as a member of the Communist Party and then as part of the wartime resistance. After her actions had earned her a term of imprisonment during the Austrofascist period she fled the country, ending up as in Paris as a member of the French Resistance. Her parents were murdered by the Nazis but five siblings managed to emigrate to England or to the United States. In 1945 the merger combining Germany and Austria was reversed at the insistence of the occupying powers whose military victory had put an end to the Hitler regime. Tilly Spiegel returned to Vienna and was one of the first researchers to study the histories of victims of National Socialism. Books that she published were frequently consulted and quoted by subsequent researchers.
Eugenie Goldstern (1884–1942) was an Austrian anthropologist who conducted research on Alpine folk culture in Switzerland.
Erna Musik was an Austrian Social Democratic Party member and resistance activist. She was a Holocaust survivor who later, as a businesswoman and local politician in Vienna, came to wider attention through tirelessly relating her experiences of Austrofascism and the concentration camps to younger generations, in order to try and avoid a revival of Nazism.
Josef Morgenstern was a Jewish art collector who was murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust.
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