Maria Stromberger (16 March 1898 – 18 May 1957) was an Austrian nurse who is best known for supporting the inmates and their resistance movement at the Auschwitz concentration camp during The Holocaust.

Her kind demeanour toward the inmates raised suspicions among SS guards, but her supervisor Eduard Wirths favoured her and overlooked any questionable behaviour.

She later provided testimony against Nazi commandant Rudolf Höss and lived in relative obscurity in Austria until her death from a heart attack in 1957.

After completing her compulsory education, Stromberger took a course to become certified as a kindergarten teacher shortly before World War I, though she never pursued a teaching career.

[13] Stromberger stayed in Bregenz for a time in the 1920s with her sister, Karoline Gräbnerm[3] before returning to Graz in 1926 to continue working at the Grand Hotel Steirerhof as a kitchen assistant.

[20] Stromberger began her service at an infectious disease hospital in Królewska Huta (present-day Chorzów), southern Poland, on 1 July 1942.

The physician at her hospital asked if she had "lost all [her] reasoning" when she said she was transferring to the camp, and Karoline strongly opposed the idea when Stromberger wrote to her.

She was required to sign two documents affirming her silence, including one that forbade her from having conversations with inmates or carry messages outside of the camp on their behalf.

[29] She answered directly to the head of the camp's medical department, Eduard Wirths, and she had authority over the nurses and over the inmates who were forced to work there.

[41] Through word of mouth, Stromberger developed a positive reputation among inmates throughout the facility and became a source of morale,[42] seen by the prisoners as a mother figure.

[43] Stromberger 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.

[46] Among others, Stromberger worked in secret with Artur Radvanský [Wikidata],[47] Kazimierz Albin [pl],[48] Hermann Langbein,[49] Tadeusz Pietrzykowski, and Stanisław Kłodziński.

[23] Stromgerger scheduled her visits to different parts of the camp so 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.

[56] Stromberger hid the condition while she provided him aid, putting him in the SS infirmary bathroom and telling the officers that it was off limits because it was being used to store the infected clothes of typhus patients.

[62] As her work at Auschwitz continued, Stromberger learned that there was an active resistance movement smuggling information out of the camp and disrupting its operations.

[65] Stromberger's position allowed her to collect information as she overheard conversations of officers and guards, and through her interactions with the camp's commandant, Rudolf Höss, who held her in high regard.

[52] Finding excuses to enter the inmates' areas of the camp, where nurses typically were not allowed, she collected some of the earliest evidence of what took place there and smuggled it out.

[45] 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 it to her calves.

[70] 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 who worked there.

Stromberger's biographer, Harald Walser [de], attributes the intense stress of her work in Auschwitz as a factor in her illness's severity.

[79] Despite her condition, Stromberger was forced to leave her bed when an Allied air raid on the Auschwitz camp destroyed the nurse's facility where she had stashed documents and contraband.

They came to resent Nowacki's presence as he began verbally abusing them,[86] and his use of Stromberger's bedroom meant that the sisters were forced to share a room.

[99] The former inmates encouraged Stromberger to seek a better job or to join them in Poland, but she had to care for her sister and she did not wish to leave her home country.

[93] Stromberger found herself repulsed by the rehabilitation of former Nazis in Austria and the nation's movement toward ignoring the Holocaust, but she had no interest in getting involved politically.

[100] She grew annoyed by Langbein's many attempts to get her involved in the Communist Party of Austria, though she assisted him when he was collecting evidence to arrest the Auschwitz gynaecologist Carl Clauberg in the 1950s.

[102] Stromberger's heart condition prevented her from engaging in strenuous activity, so she devoted all of her time to her day job at the textile factory as well as work as a freelance masseuse.

[107] Stromberger's apolitical nature prevented her from being recognised to the extent of other resistance figures; she assisted both nationalists and communists, and neither considered her to be fully part of their respective movements.

[112] The Johann August Malin Society began producing articles and lectures about Stromberger in 1983, and the Maximillan Kolbe Foundation featured her in various works in the 1990s.

[114] Stromberger first received scholarly attention with an article by Andreas Eder in 2007, and more American and German academics wrote about her in the years that followed, including Langbein.

[115] The historian and politician Harald Walser wrote a biography about Stromberger in 2021, Ein Engel in der Hölle von Auschwitz (transl.