Katharina Barth

Katharina Barth was born in Ločice in what is now Slovenia. After finishing school, she trained as a gunsmith and ran gun stores in Vienna and Slovenia. In Vienna, her gun store is located at Neustiftgasse 16.

Katharina Barth is a staunchly patriotic Austrian and opponent of National Socialism. She supported resistance fighters and partisans through her arms stores in Vienna and Slovenia. She supplied them with weapons and ammunition and also repaired them. Although the sale of weapons and ammunition was subject to particularly strict regulations in the Third Reich, she circumvented them. She made her business premises available for meetings of resistance fighters.

In addition, Katharina Barth helped citizens and soldiers in need to escape. After a meeting in her Viennese store, she is reported by a soldier who is to be helped to escape.

On March 2, 1944, Katharina Barth is arrested by the Gestapo and sent to the prison on Elisabethpromenade. Despite mistreatment by the Gestapo, she remains steadfast, does not reveal any names and denies the crime of which she is accused. Her testimony in court saved Ewald Sribar, another soldier whom she had helped to escape, from the death penalty.

Her apartment in Vienna was destroyed during the last phase of the war and her arms store was looted. After the liberation of Austria in 1945, the communists who had come to power in Yugoslavia confiscated her property there.

Although Katharina Barth had a 50% reduction in earning capacity after her Gestapo imprisonment, she rebuilt her business after the war. She joins the ÖVP-Kameradschaft der politisch Verfolgten und Bekenner für Österreich.