Ida Strohmer 1922 - 1945

Born 5.5.1922 in Hegyeshalom
Died 17.4.1945 in Mauthausen

Biography

Ida Beck was born on 5 May 1922 in Hegyeshalom (Hungary), the daughter of Johann and Ida Beck. At the beginning of the 1920s the family moved to Vienna and was living in the Währing district from 1927 at the latest. Ida worked as a sales assistant and also on the trams for a short time. Just before her arrest in 1945 she was an employee in the shoe shop owned by her brother-in-law. In February 1939 she married the electrician Franz Strohmer. In June 1941 their daughter, named Renate, was born.

Franz Strohmer, together with his brother Hans, was already active during the austrofascist Ständestaat period as well as after the ‘annexation’ of Austria to Nazi Germany on behalf of the social democratic and later the communist party. The available sources do not reveal the extent of Ida’s participation in this resistance activity. We can, however, deduce a high level of involvement from the wording in her letters and from an eye-witness report.

After the execution of her husband in November 1943, Ida, together with her brother-in-law Hans and some others, carried on with resistance activities as part of the communist resistance cell referred to in the literature as ‘Gruppe Strohmer’. The group looked after prisoners of war and helped them to escape, procured forged documents for refugees and took part in quite serious industrial espionage.[1] The group’s downfall was a radio connection to the Secret Service in London, which was betrayed by a double agent with the code name ‘Franke’.

Through Franke’s betrayal, Ida Stroher was arrested on 16 March 1945 along with other members of the resistance group and was taken to the Oberlanzendorf ‘work education camp’. Following brutal interrogation she and 13 other comrades from the group were forced to endure the cruel death march to Mauthausen concentration camp, where she was murdered on 17 April 1945 in the gas chamber.[2]

The last report of Ida Strohmer comes from an eye-witness, Alfred Pollak, who also took part in the death march to Mauthausen and was the only member of the ‘Gruppe Strohmer’ to survive: ‘Ida Strohmer develops septicaemia in her foot and yet still doggedly stays on her feet. Despite the terrible fate that she’s already endured, she remains brave. The husband hanged a year ago, now the brother-in-law shot as well, she knows that she too faces death. Yet she talks to me of opera music and the Burgtheater as if we had no other cares; she thinks of her orphaned child with tears and at night, in the rain on the cold field where we rest, she mumbles arias from Verdi’s Tosca. Then a conversation strikes up again about the resistance movement and here too, this admirable woman is marvellously well-informed and thoroughly convinced.’[3]

Mag. Dr. Lukas SANITZER (*1966, Vienna): grandson of Ida Strohmer, history and Latin teacher in Vienna. Dr. phil awarded for a thesis on the life of Wilbirgis des Einwik Weizlan. Publication of school text books, research on school development; author of the book ‘Ich trauere nicht um die Jahre’ about the Viennese Strohmer family’s and the Gruppe Strohmer’s resistance to the Nazi regime.  

References:

Sainitzer, Lukas: Ich trauere nicht um die Jahre. Dokumentation (Horn/Vienna 2012) Sainitzer, Lukas: Die Gruppe Strohmer und der Todesmarsch von Oberlanzendorf nach Mauthausen. In: Bundesministerium für Inneres (ed.): KZ-Gedenkstätte Mauthausen | Mauthausen Memorial 2013. Forschung, Dokumentation, Information (Vienna 2014) p. 71–81

[1] Privatarchiv Otto Molden, NL 7/Do 21, Mappe XIX; Rot-Weiß-Rot-Buch. Darstellungen, Dokumente und Nachweise zur Vorgeschichte und Geschichte der Okkupation Österreichs (nach amtlichen Quellen), Erster Teil (Vienna 1946), p. 157.

[2] Hans Maršálek: Die Geschichte des Konzentrationslagers Mauthausen. Dokumentation (Vienna 42006), p. 385.

[3] Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes, DÖW 20000/H383, p. 4.

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