Austria was merged into Nazi Germany in March 1938 and the repression of known anti-Nazis became more systematic. That same month Sturm was arrested again, this time by the Gestapo. By June 1938 she had been taken to Lichtenburg concentration camp in central Germany, between Leipzig and Berlin. She fell ill but recovered, setting up a small team of "fixers" – the so-called "Sturm column", who made themselves useful by mending broken fixtures in the camp, thereby winning a level of respect from the para-military guards who would let the "Sturm column" into their own parts of the camp in order to effect repairs and, at the same time, steal food. Slightly less than a year later, in May 1939, the concentration camp at Lichtenburg was closed and the women inmates were transferred to Ravensbrück concentration camp, to the north of Berlin. Glimpses afforded by sources suggest Sturm was not broken by the system. There is a reference to her as "the Austrian communist and jack-of-all-trades [who would] teach "students": how to put up fences, bang in nails, and break up locks", and later, slightly unexpectedly, of how she would "hold discussions on Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace...in the back of block 13. ... Students [might] find the book highly repellent since Hanna [had] found the book in the latrine." At Ravensbrück she also continued to operate her "Sturm column" of hands-on fixers and menders. She came to be regarded by the camp authorities as a "reliable prisoner" and was employed in 1941 as a domestic servant by , the concentration camp doctor. She would later recall how she had been present while Sonntag beat , too drunk to notice or to care that Sturm was standing by.