Anna Lasser (1913–1943)

"And as I said, we were the poorest of the poor."Stefanie Cudy, Tochter

Anna Lasser was born in Klosterneuburg in 1913. At nineteen, she had her first child, Leopold, and two years later her daughter Stefanie was born. Left by the children’s father, she married Karl Burger in 1935. The couple stayed with relatives for a time, later they lived in their own apartment, and finally, apart from each other. Leopoldine, born in 1936, and Christine, born in 1937, lived with foster families. In 1938, Anna Lasser took Leopold and Christine to stay with her. She tried to make ends meet for herself and the children as an unskilled worker, and by begging and stealing. In 1939, she petitioned for divorce, because her husband did not pay any alimony and lived with another woman. After her youngest child, Adolf, was born, she withdrew her complaint against her husband. From 1938 until January 1940, Leopold and Stefanie lived with their mother. In a coordinated operation, the children were picked up by the welfare services on the same day that their mother was arrested by the police. Two weeks later, Karl Burger petitioned for divorce. Anna Lasser was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment. After the end of her term, she was taken to Ravensbrück by a collective transport on May 6, 1941, under the orders of the Reichskriminalpolizei (Reich criminal police) in Berlin. She died there on December 2, 1943, by being injected with poison.

Anna Lasser's daughter Stefanie (excerpt from interview, 1999):
"Yes, and about my mother I don't really know anything but the time when we were taken away by welfare people, then I saw her, though I can remember that, also her dress, but I cannot pass it on. I can remember she wore a dress with a jacket, she had tied her hair back, I can still see her walk up Albrechtsstraße today. I cannot tell you any more, right? And as I said, we were the poorest of the poor, we didn't have anything to eat, we had one bed the three of us slept in, we didn't have anything but a coat to cover us, or whatever, we didn't have anything to eat, I went every day – in Martinstraße, there is – it used to be called the Dreimäderlhaus, yes, I went every day for my convent soup, as it is called. I wasn't the only one, a few went, but I was there every day. At four, five years, I already knocked, held in my dish, I can remember that very well, too."

Anna Lasser's daughter Leopoldine (excerpt from interview, 1999):
"… and of our mother, we only know that she – from a witness I met by chance at a party in Gloggnitz, and who told me that I looked so much like her, and – Burger, Burger, that electrified her. Well, and then she told me, well, Annerl has died in my arms. (…) She told me, well, your mother also was used for sexual activities, they positively sent for her on evenings when those SS people partied, and she got sick, and then they threw her away."