Code Name “Mary”: Memoirs of an American Women in the Austrian Underground

When the Nazi party came to power in Germany, American Muriel Gardiner was a student in Vienna, undergoing analysis and studying the psycho-analysis and medicine that would later become her career. As a member of the foreign community in Austria, she became involved in protesting Fascism and the compromises Chancellor Schuschnigg made. When the Nazis annexed Austria, she grew to be an active part of the underground movement, assisting dissidents and prominent Jews to leave the country.Her story in “Code Name “Mary” was written many years later, and as she acknowledges, her memory at the time of writing was not clear. With no notes and simply using recollection, she nonetheless presents an exciting story of a young woman, on foreign and often hostile soil, with a dependent child, trying to do the right thing in the face of compelling wrong and unceasing danger.