Maria Stromberger

Maria Stromberger was born on 16 March 1898 to Maria Lapeiner and Franz Seraphin Stromberger in Metnitz, Carinthia, Austria–Hungary.^[1] Stromberger had eight elder siblings, five of whom survived infancy.^[2] Her parents operated an inn owned by her mother,^[3] and her father also worked as a clerk for a merchant.^[4] Although the family was not wealthy, they were among the few property owners in their town because both of Stromberger's parents had inherited houses.^[5] Stromberger was raised Catholic.^[6]

The family left Metnitz in 1899 and moved to other parts of the region, relocating to Emmersdorf where Franz became an estate manager.^[3] Stromberger fell ill when she was six years old and was expected to die before she ultimately recovered.^[7] They later moved to Kappel am Krappfeld.^[8] Stromberger took a class to be certified as a kindergarten teacher shortly before World War I, but never followed through with finding a teaching job.^[9]

Stromberger moved to Graz when she was 16, where she lived sporadically for the next 22 years.^[10] While in Graz, she worked in the Grand Hotel Steirerhof, a high-class hotel owned by her cousin and her cousin's husband.^[11] She left the job in 1916 to care for her ailing mother,^[12] who died the following year.^[2] Stromberger stayed in Bregenz, Austria, for a time in the 1920s.^[6] She had accompanied her sister, whose poor eyesight meant that she needed Stromberger as a caretaker.^[10] She returned to Graz in 1926 to keep working at the Grand Hotel Steirerhof. She moved to work at another inn, where she worked with minimal pay until the owner's death in 1937.^[13] When her father had a stroke, she became his caretaker until his death in July 1937.^[14]

Stromberger was interested in becoming a nurse since childhood,^[15] but she did not begin studying medicine until after her father's death, when she was 39 years old.^[16] She began her studies on 13 November 1937, first at the Sanatorium Bregenz-Mehrerau, before training for a year in the Mehrerau Sanitarium. Stromberger then attended a nursing school in Heilbronn from 1939 to 1940.^[17] She began working at the Klagenfurt District Hospital in Klagenfurt on 10 October 1940.^[18]

Stromberger left Klagenfurt to work in Amlach at the Lienz District Hospital [de] on 10 September 1941, where she tended to Wehrmacht soldiers.^[19] Here she heard stories about the poor conditions in Nazi-occupied Poland, including the persecution of Jewish people.^[15] By her religious convictions, she felt compelled to help.^[20] Despite her sister's warnings, Stromberger requested a transfer to Poland. It was approved on 1 May 1942.^[21]

Arriving in Poland, Stromberger began work at an infectious disease hospital in Królewska Huta (present day Chorzów) on 1 July 1942.^[22] In Chorzów, she treated two typhus patients who had been released from the Auschwitz concentration camp. The two were violently distressed for several weeks and kept in isolation. After recovering, they explained to Stromberger what they had experienced at Auschwitz.^[23] Realizing the suffering that they had experienced, she requested a transfer to Auschwitz, hoping she would be able to help the inmates.^[24] The administration interpreted this as an expression of support for Nazism, and she was permitted to work in the camp.^[25]

Upon transferring to Auschwitz, Stromberger was informed that inmates were only permitted to receive treatment from inmate physicians, and she was assigned as head nurse for SS officers.^[26] No effort was made to verify whether she was a member of the Nazi Party, and no evidence exists that she ever was.^[24] She arrived at Auschwitz on 1 October 1942,^[27] in the capacity of a German Red Cross nurse.^[28] After arriving at the camp, Stromberger was required to sign a document swearing her to silence about its activity.^[29] She briefly considered leaving when the full operations of Auschwitz were explained to her by the camp's adjutant, Robert Mulka.^[30]

Stromberger began her first day of work on 30 October.^[31] She took the position of Oberschwester, or the matron.^[32] In this position, she held authority over several nurses and some of the inmates forced to work with them, and she answered directly to the head of the camp's medical department, Eduard Wirths.^[33] Stromberger was a strict supervisor, maintaining a reserved demeanour and demanding a great deal of work from those under her authority.^[34]

Stromberger had hoped to treat the inmates, but she was appointed as a nurse for the SS guards as she had arrived when they were experiencing an outbreak of typhus.^[30] The severity of the outbreak and the lack of infectious disease expertise among the medical staff made Stromberger one of the camp's most valuable staff members once she arrived.^[31] Stromberger's work kept her in the main facility, Auschwitz I.^[35] From the SS infirmary, she was able to see inmates being taken to the gas chambers where they were executed.^[26]

Though she was not allowed to treat the inmates, Stromberger came into contact with those who were forced to provide labour in the SS infirmary. The inmates were wary of her when they first met her.^[36] She first gained the trust of an inmate, Edek Pys, after she expressed horror at the suicide of another inmate.^[37] She fainted when she saw an inmate run into an electric fence while he was being shot at, requiring Pys to run down the hall for assistance from another nurse. She later asked Pys why the inmate did this, so he explained the conditions of the camp and why so many inmates committed suicide. He then encouraged her to observe the evening roll call, as most inmates were in worse condition than the ones she worked with in the infirmary. Here she saw visibly starved inmates and the bodies of those who had died working that day.^[38] Another inmate had her watch as members of the SS beat and mutilated Jewish children. Her mental health was severely affected by the sight and she took several days of sick leave.^[39] Feeling she had to speak to someone, she started engaging in personal conversations with the inmates, which was forbidden. They in turn began to trust her as they came to understand she felt horror toward the SS.^[40]

A liaison who collected reports about the camp from Stromberger commented that she likely gained the trust of the inmates because "her serenity and self-control inspired people's confidence".^[32] The inmates' trust in Stromberger was ascertained when Pys was accused of smuggling contraband. He had been taking some of the milk that he was supposed to deliver to the SS, but the SS man Geiger discovered an inmate with the milk, and the inmate gave Pys up. Stromberger chastised Geiger when he attacked Pys, falsely saying that it was spoiled milk that had been given to SS men with typhus and venereal disease, then inviting Geiger to drink it, which he did not. Without intervention, Pys and the owner of the milk would both have faced execution.^[41] She gained further credit among the inmates when she provided assistance to Zbigniew Raynoch [pl], whose frail health when entering the camp gave him a low chance of survival.^[42] To protect the inmates she worked with from the evening roll call—a demanding hours-long affair—Stromberger insisted that she needed help later into the night and retained the inmates until roll call ended.^[43]

Pys became Stromberger's main contact among the inmates,^[44] and through him she made contact with several more who were forced to work in the SS officers' quarters.^[45] Among others, Stromberger worked in secret with Artur Radvanský [Wikidata],^[46] Kazimierz Albin [pl],^[47] Hermann Langbein,^[48] Tadeusz Pietrzykowski, and Stanisław Kłodziński.^[49] She scheduled her visits to different parts of the camp so that they would not coincide with an SS presence, allowing her to provide food, medicine, and information to the inmates as she went about her duties.^[50] This included some of the special allowances reserved for typhus-infected SS men, such as chocolate and champagne.^[51] She gave an attic key to one inmate, Pietrzykowski, so he could collect medicine for the others as needed.^[49]

Pys contracted typhus at the end of 1942; those who were ill were often executed to prevent the disease from spreading.^[52] Stromberger hid the condition while she provided him aid, putting him in the SS infirmary bathroom and telling the officers that they could not enter because it was being used to store the infected clothes of typhus patients. She smuggled food and medication to him, and she saw to it that all of his work requirements were done. After Pys was liberated in 1945, he credited Stromberger for his survival.^[15]

Stromberger learned of the resistance movement of the inmates that sought to disrupt the camp's operations and smuggle information out.^[53] When the Auschwitz Combat Group formed as a faction of the resistance, they considered Stromberger their best prospect of gaining an ally among the staff. Raynoch, a member of the group's leadership and a beneficiary of Stromberger's actions, collaborated with Pys to recruit her. When Pys asked if she was willing to assist in more dangerous ways, she agreed.^[54] As she did not speak Polish, she spoke in a code common to the resistance members.^[32]

Considered an essential member of the staff, Stromberger was given significant leeway in her activities, giving her more opportunities to provide for the inmates. Because of this, her infirmary became a hub of the resistance movement.^[55] She monitored the SS men who entered and found excuses to expel the ones with violent reputations. Her position allowed her to travel between the various camps within the Auschwitz facility, further enabling her ability to reach the inmates.^[56]

Several more incidents turned Stromberger against the SS over the following months and reinforced her desire to help the inmates. She nearly fainted upon seeing the a bloodied man following his attempt to escape and subsequent interrogation—the SS men laughed when they saw she had turned pale. Then in the first days of 1943, Stromberger saw three trucks full of naked, sickly, starved men driving toward the crematorium. Agonising her was the fact that she was wearing her nurse's uniform as she watched the men be taken to their deaths, unable to provide them aid.^[57]

Stromberger helped smuggle information out of Auschwitz on behalf of the inmates. She found excuses to enter the inmates' areas of the camp, where nurses typically were not allowed, and provided some of the earliest evidence of what took place there.^[58] She also carried reports detailing more sensitive information about the camp,^[59] provided to her in reports acquired by Kłodziński and Langbein.^[60] Upon receiving one, Stromberger hid it somewhere inconspicuous, such as among ration cards or in a matchbox, and carried it with her when she left for the store.^[32] She then met up with a liaison at the train station or a nearby town to hand it off. Collaborators outside of the camp listed her in their records as "Sister" and "S".^[49] While outside, she collected information for the inmates and acquired rations and other things, eventually including pistols, ammunition, and explosives.^[53] In fear of having her items searched, Stromberger smuggled contraband into the camp by hiding it in the waistline of her nurse's uniform or by taping them to her calves.^[61] Also among the things she collected was poison, so the inmates could take their own lives if they were to be interrogated through torture.^[62]

Through word of mouth, Stromberger developed a positive reputation among inmates throughout the facility and became a source of morale,^[63] seen by the prisoners as a mother figure.^[64] She was reported by the SS for her kindness to the inmates in 1943.^[65] Particularly suspicious of Stromberger was an Unterscharführer, Alfred Kaulfuss, whoe made it a point to monitor her and try to have her removed.^[66] When questioned by her boss, Wirths, she reminded him that she was not a member of the SS and would not beat the prisoners.^[67] Wirths valued Stromberger and wished to keep her in the position,^[55] so he overlooked reports and promised to protect her from any consequences.^[67] He warned Stromberger that she could become a prisoner herself if she was not more careful, though he reassured her and discouraged her from transferring.^[65] When Kaulfuss pressed the issue, Stromberger told him that she knew he had once drunkenly torn up a photograph of Heinrich Himmler, saying so in front of Wirths and suggesting that he was not fit to question anyone's loyalty.^[67]

In December 1943, Stromberger smuggled a feast, including wine and champagne, into the infirmary to hold a Christmas party in the attic for the inmates she worked alongside.^[53] Describing his experience, Langbein felt that Stromberger participated as one of their own.^[68] 17 inmates attended in total, including Jews and Communists. The Jewish inmates took turns standing watch, while those inside were ready to disguise the scene as an effort to clean the attic. Stromberger hosted a similar Christmas party in the boiler room the following year.^[69]

As the mass killings of Jewish people became a larger part of operations in Auschwitz in 1944, members of the staff were required to sign a document that included a pledge of support for the killings and agreement to assist in carrying them out. Stromberger refused to sign it, telling Wirths that it violated her responsibility as a medical professional, so he allowed her to cross out that provision of the document. Staff members in other departments were told they would become inmates if they did not sign.^[70]

Stromberger first considered fleeing the camp in early 1944. She was to take leave, at which point she would escape to Switzerland. She told Pys of her plan, so he warned the Auschwitz Combat Group, and Raynoch convinced Stromberger to return once her leave ended.^[71] She took two weeks off that August, staying in Bregenz with her sister. Upon her return, she smuggled two of her father's revolvers into the camp, giving one to the Auschwitz Combat Group's leader and the other to Pys. Pys got his choice between the two.^[72]

With the Red Army advancing in Poland, the inmates sought escape, fearing the SS would kill them all if the camp was about to be overtaken. Stromberger began escorting Pys to the nursery in Rajsko on trips to obtain flowers for the infirmary. This gave him an opportunity to learn the geography around the camp.^[73] When the inmates planned an uprising on 27 October 1944, Stromberger was one of the few non-inmates aware of their intentions.^[74]

In December 1944, Stromberger fell ill with polyarteritis. Wirths provided her with morphine, though she declined to use it.^[75] Her condition left her bedridden with severe joint inflammation. Stromberger's biographer, Harald Walser, attributes the intense stress of her work in Auschwitz as a factor in her illness's severity.^[76] Despite her condition, Stromberger was forced to leave her bed when an Allied air raid on the Auschwitz facility destroyed the nurse's facility where she had stashed documents and contraband. Accompanied by an inmate, she recovered the items before they were discovered, which would have implicated her in the resistance movements. These were the final items she gave to the liaison, delivering them on 31 December.^[77]

Stromberger was ordered to report to Berlin in January 1945. Here she spoke to the Red Cross head army nurse, who sent Stromberger to a neurological hospital in Prague. Arriving at the hospital on January 6, she had medical history taken by an Oberscharfüher doctor and discovered that Wirths had misdiagnosed her with a morphine addiction.^[78] The inmates who had worked with Stromberger, including Pys, Kłodziński, and Langbein, believed Wirths did this deliberately to get her safely away from the camp.^[79] She then left Prague and returned to her home in Bregenz on 3 February.^[80]

When French forces occupied Vorarlberg, Stromberger's involvement with Auschwitz was made known to them. They arrested her, believing that she had executed patients.^[75][74] She spent several weeks in prison before being relocated to an internment camp for Nazis.^[15] Stromberger wrote to the inmates that she had assisted, who spoke on her behalf.^[81] One Kraków newspaper ran a front-page article demanding that she be freed. A former resistance leader and future prime minister of communist Poland, Józef Cyrankiewicz, negotiated her release.^[44] She was freed on 23 September 1946.^[15]

Stromberger gave up nursing following the end of World War II,^[82] and she returned to her sister's apartment in Austria.^[27] For a time, she considered working as a massage therapist and took classes on it.^[8] She eventually took work in a textile factory in Bregenz.^[82] Stromberger testified against the commandant of Auschwitz Rudolf Höss in 1947,^[82] and she assisted in collecting evidence against the Auschwitz doctor Carl Clauberg in 1956.^[15] She was greeted with "storming ovations" when she returned to Poland for Höss's trial.^[44]

Stromberger maintained contact with the former inmates of Auschwitz for the rest of her life.^[10] Stromberger died of a heart attack in Bregenz on 18 May 1957, following a dentist appointment in which she had ten teeth pulled.^[82][44] Her sister had her cremated, doing so in secret as it was against Catholic teachings at the time, and buried her urn on 31 August 1957.^[27]

The extent of Stromberger's care for the inmates was not discovered until after she had left Auschwitz.^[44] She was a national hero among the Polish resistance, but she lived in relative obscurity in Austria,^[44] and she rejected any idea that she was a hero.^[62] Stromberger was named an honorary member of the Austrian Union of Former Prisoners of Concentration Camps at the end of the war, and she was named honorary president of the Holocaust survivors' group KZ-Verband in November 1955.^[15] Her apolitical nature prevented her from being recognized to the extent of other resistance figures; she assisted both nationalists and communists, and neither considered her part of their respective movements.^[83]

Obituaries celebrating Stromberger were written in Austrian newspapers such as the communist Volksstimme and Catholic Die Furche, but among Austrians the full extent of her actions in Auschwitz were only known to a few people.^[10] Her correspondences and other documents related to her actions were preserved by her niece, Hedwig Gerber.^[84] A depiction of Stromberger appeared as a supporting character in the 2020 film The Champion.^[85]

• Benedict, Susan (2006). "Maria Stromberger: A Nurse in the Resistance in Auschwitz". Nursing History Review. 14 (1): 189–202. doi:10.1891/1062-8061.14.189. ISSN 1062-8061. PMID 16411476. S2CID 41173026.
• Brunner, Simone (2021). "Was ich tat, war Menschenpflicht" [What I Did, Was Human Duty]. Zeit Online (in German). Archived from the original on 3 December 2021. Retrieved 4 April 2023.
• Langbein, Hermann (2005). People in Auschwitz. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0-8078-6363-3.
• ""Engel von Auschwitz" wurde vor 60 Jahren in Lindau beerdigt" ["Angel of Auschwitz" was buried in Lindau 60 years ago]. Schwäbische (in German). 27 January 2017. Archived from the original on 4 April 2023. Retrieved 4 April 2023.
• Shields, Linda; Benedict, Susan (2016). "Lives Not Worth Living: Ethical Dilemmas of Nursing in Nazi Germany". In Smith, Kylie M.; Lewenson, Sandra; McAllister, Annemarie (eds.). Nursing History for Contemporary Role Development. Springer Publishing Company. pp. 83–85. doi:10.1891/9780826132383.0005. ISBN 978-0-8261-3238-3.
• Walser, Harald (1988). ""Der Engel von Auschwitz" – Zum Wirken der Krankenschwester Maria Stromberger" ["The Angel of Auschwitz": On the work of the nurse Maria Stromberger]. Montfort (in German). 40 (1): 70–78.
• Walser, Harald (2021). Ein Engel in der Hölle von Auschwitz: Das Leben der Krankenschwester Maria Stromberger [An Angel in the Hell of Auschwitz: The Life of Nurse Maria Stromberger] (in German). Falter Verlag. ISBN 978-3-85439-702-1.
• Witek-Malicka, Wanda (August 2021). "The Champion of Auschwitz, Directed by Maciej Barczewski Historical Review" (PDF). Memoria. 47.
• Wontor-Cichy, Teresa (2022). Ciesielska, Maria; Gajewski, Piotr; Antosz-Rekucki, Jakub (eds.). "Stanisław Kłodziński: Auschwitz survivor, medical practitioner, social activist, and journalist (1918–1990)". Medical Review Auschwitz: Medicine Behind the Barbed Wire Conference Proceedings 2022. Translated by Teresa Bałuk-Ulewiczowa. Polish Institute for Evidence Based Medicine.

• Stromberger's testimony against Rudolf Höss (in English and Polish) – Chronicles of Terror