Helene Lucia Martha Degrassi

Helene Lucia Martha Degrassi was born in Vienna as the legitimate daughter of Alois Degrassi, a merchant from Istria, and Martha, born Fischer. Nothing has been preserved about her childhood and youth.

In the interwar period, she worked at Herrengasse Wohnbau AG and lived in the same building, in the high-rise at Herrengasse 6-8, in Vienna's 1st district. She has a second residence in Trieste. She is not politically active during this time. On March 12, 1938, she witnessed the demise of free and independent Austria with the invasion of the German Wehrmacht.

On December 18, 1941, Helene Degrassi was arrested by the Gestapo for 'foreign correspondence and atrocity reports' and deported without trial to the Ravensbrück concentration camp on May 15, 1942. She was liberated there by the Red Army on April 29, 1945.

In liberated Austria, Helene Degrassi did not take up any further professional positions and retired. She joins the newly founded Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) and the ÖVP Comradeship of the Politically Persecuted and Confessors for Austria. She died unmarried and childless in Vienna at the age of 83.