Helene Kafka was born on May 1, 1894, in Brno-Husovice (Hussowitz, Czech Republic). After the family’s relocation to the federal and imperial capital Vienna, she grew up in the typical milieu of a poor immigrant family in the 20th district of Brigittenau. Helene completed elementary, middle, and household management school and initially worked as a maid and tobacconist.

In October 1913, Helene Kafka began her work as an assistant nurse at the Vienna-Lainz Municipal Hospital (now Hietzing Hospital with Neurological Center Rosenhügel). There she met the Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity and joined the religious community in 1914. From 1917 to 1919, Sister Restituta worked in the Internal Medicine Department at Lainz Hospital and developed into a pioneer of holistic nursing care. From 1919, she worked at what is now the Lower Austrian State Hospital in Mödling. There, she soon became known as a confident and energetic head operating room nurse – as well as a compassionate and motherly helper and companion to patients.

Under the National Socialist tyranny, the passionate Christian and Austrian Restituta – Helene Kafka – was branded a criminal due to her unwavering and consistent stand for faith, justice, and human dignity. Sister Restituta died on March 30, 1943, after 13 months of imprisonment in the Vienna Regional Court by beheading.

Pope John Paul II beatified Sister Restituta on June 21, 1998, in Vienna’s Heldenplatz. She is the first martyr of Austria. Her liturgical feast day is October 29 (the day of her death sentence in 1942).