Gertrude Horn (née Fanto) was born in Vienna in 1924 and grew up in poor circumstances. She attended Jewish religious education classes outside of school, but in retrospect describes herself as non-religious.
Despite her conversion to Judaism, her mother was an "Aryan" for the Nazis. According to the so called Nuremberg Laws, Gertrude was therefore considered a “half-Jew”, but this subjected her to the same discriminatory regulations as the Jewish population. For her, this meant – among other things– that she wasn’t able to find a place for an apprenticeship as a tailor.
After the November pogrom, during which her father was arrested, the family had to leave their home. For a short time they lived in a so-called collective apartment here at Lilienbrunngasse 6, where there is now a park. At that time Gertrude had to work in a laundry, where she made contact with a Jewish resistance group - the so-called "Mischlingsliga".
When the group was exposed in 1944, Gertrude was arrested and deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp and from there to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, where she had to do forced labor for an aircraft company.
At the end of the war she escaped from a death march and returned to Vienna in the summer of 1945. There she worked as a journalist, became involved as a member of the KPÖ and married Otto Horn, whom she had met in the resistance group.
Her interview was recorded in Vienna, Austria in 1989.