Irma Schwager (31 May 1920 - 22 June 2015) was an Austrian-Jewish anti-fascist resistance fighter and politician.

Biography

Schwager was born on 31 May 1920 in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

, Austria. 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 Gurs internment camp was an internment camp and prisoner of war camp constructed in 1939 in Gurs, a site in southwestern France, not far from Pau. The camp was originally set up by the French government after the fall of Catalonia at the e ...

before joining the

French resistance The French Resistance (french: La Résistance) was a collection of organisations that fought the German occupation of France during World War II, Nazi occupation of France and the Collaborationism, collaborationist Vichy France, Vichy régim ...

. She was stationed in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

and convinced German soldiers to turn against the

Nazis Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in N ...

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 The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, link ...

, and their daughter born during the war. She found that her parents and two brothers had been murdered in the

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

. She joined the Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ) after the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

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. Schwager advocated pacifism and protested the use of nuclear power. She was nominated for a

Nobel Peace Prize The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Swedish industrialist, inventor and armaments (military weapons and equipment) manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Chemistry, Physics, Physiolog ...

in 2005. In January 2015, Schwager made a speech in Vienna to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp. Schwager died on 22 June 2015.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Schwager, Irma 1920 births 2015 deaths Female resistance members of World War II Communist Party of Austria politicians Austrian communists Politicians from Vienna Jewish women politicians Jews in the French resistance Gurs internment camp survivors Communist members of the French Resistance Jewish communists Jewish women activists Jewish emigrants from Austria after the Anschluss Jewish pacifists Anti-nuclear activists Austrian women in politics