In what may be one of the country’s final trials for crimes committed during World War Two, a 97-year-old woman who served as a Nazi concentration camp secretary was found guilty on Tuesday for her part in the killing of thousands of people.
97-year-old woman given a two-year term for her role in the mass murder of thousands of people
According to a court spokeswoman, Irmgard Furchner was given a two-year suspended sentence by the district court in the town of Itzehoe in the north for complicity in the murder of 10,505 individuals and the attempted murder of five others.
Captives “cruelly killed in the concentration camp by gassings, hostile conditions in the camp, via disease or malnutrition
The captives were “cruelly klilled by gassings, by hostile conditions in the camp, by transports to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, and by being sent on so-called death marches,” according to a statement from the
court.
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Approximately 65,000 people perished at the camp in Stutthof, close to Gdansk in modern-day Poland, either through disease and malnutrition or in the gas chamber. Involved in the Holocaust by the Nazis were Jews and prisoners of war.
As per court’s statement, the defendant’s job there was to prepare paperwork “essential for the organisation of the camp and the execution of the cruel, methodical acts of killing.”
Maxi Wantzen, a state prosecutor, declared that “it is very essential for the survivors and for us today that this trial was brought to a close.. and that there was a verdict which established guilt.”
Originally, Furchner was accused of participating in 11,412 killings, but the evidence against her was inadequate to persuade the court that she was guilty in each and every one of them.
Furchner was wheeled into court while sporting a beret, a cream-colored winter coat, and a blanket draped across her lap. When reporters questioned her defence attorney about how she interpreted the decision, he remained silent.
Furchner expressed regret for what had happened during her closing argument at the trial earlier this month and expressed regret about her presence in Stutthof at the time.
“Only a secretary, you may say, but the role that even a secretary had back then in a (concentration camp’s) bureaucracy is a major one,” Wantzen said.
Furchner, who worked at Stutthof between 1943 and 1945, received a sentence under the juvenile justice system since she was between the ages of 18 and 19.
In September 2021, Furchner momentarily fled the scene, delaying the commencement of her trial. After missing court, she was found hours later.
In what is perceived as a rush by prosecutors to seize the last chance to bring justice for the victims of some of the worst mass atrocities in history, she is the most recent nonagenarian to be charged with Holocaust crimes.
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