a dish of Germany convicted this Tuesday, 20, a former secretary of a Nazi concentration camp, aged 97, charged with complicity in the murder of more than 10,000 people. The sentence was two years in prison, which was suspended because of age.
In one of the last attempts in the country on the holocaustIrmgard Furchner was indicted for her role in the “cruel and vicious murder” of prisoners at the Stutthof camp in occupied Poland. She is the first woman in decades to be charged with Nazi crimes in Germany.
The conviction follows the request of the public prosecutor’s office, which emphasized the “extraordinary historical importance” of the process with a predominantly “symbolic” verdict. The defendant was in a wheelchair when the verdict was read.
:quality(80)/cloudfrontuseast1.images.arcpublishing.com/estadao/VBUGOQEVAVD5VDELF5LTO4ULTU.jpg "97yearold Nazi collaborator convicted of murdering 10,000 people 3")
Irmgard takes part in the trial for complicity in the murder of 10,000 people in a Nazi camp Photo: Christian Charisius / POOL / AFP
She practically did not speak during the trial, only in the final hearings, back in December, when she broke the silence. “I’m sorry for everything that happened,” he told the district court in the city of Itzehoe (north of the country).
At the beginning of the trial, Furchner tried to flee in September 2021. She fled the nursing home where she lives and made her way to a subway station.
The former secretary tried to evade police for several hours before being arrested in the nearby town Hamburg🇧🇷 She was detained for five days.
Lawyers called for the elderly woman’s acquittal, claiming that evidence presented at the trial “did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt” that the woman knew about the murders.
The accused was a teenager at the time of the crime and was brought before a juvenile court for this reason.
Historians estimate that 65,000 people died in the camp near modernday Gdansk, including “Jewish prisoners, Polish partisans and SovietRussian prisoners of war,” according to prosecutors.
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Between June 1943 and April 1945, Furchner worked in the office of camp commander Paul Werner Hoppe. According to the indictment, she wrote and drafted the SS officer’s orders and delivered his mail.
In court hearings, survivors of the Stutthof camp gave moving accounts of their suffering.
Prosecutor Maxi Wantzen thanked the witnesses for their courage, including some who also acted as joint plaintiffs, and said they spoke of the “absolute hell” of the camp. “They feel it is their duty, even if it involves constant pain,” she said.
The public prosecutor’s office pointed out to the judges that the defendants’ administrative work “ensured the proper functioning of the camp” and gave them “knowledge of all events in Stutthof”.
In addition, she explained that “lifethreatening conditions” such as food and water shortages and the spread of deadly diseases, including typhoid, were deliberately perpetuated and immediately apparent.
Although poor camp conditions and forced labor caused most of the deaths, the Nazis also used gas chambers and firing squad execution facilities to murder hundreds of people deemed unfit for work.
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Wantzen noted that despite the defendant’s advanced age, “it was important to hold the trial” and complete the historical record as Holocaust survivors die.
Seventyseven years after the end of 2nd war, time is running out to bring Holocaustrelated criminals to justice. In recent years, several cases have been dropped because the accused died or were unable to appear in court.
The sentencing of the guard of 2011 John Demjanjukbased on the fact that he was part of the regime’s killing machine. Hitlerset a precedent and paved the way for multiple lawsuits.
Courts have since issued numerous guilty verdicts on this ground, rather than murder or atrocities directly related to the accused. / AFP