A 97yearold former Nazi camp secretary who was recently sentenced to two years in prison for being an accessory to murder has decided to appeal her sentence, a court in Itzehoe, Germany, said.
The Federal Court of Justice will examine possible procedural defects, said a spokeswoman for the court in a statement.
The judgment is “nonbinding” until the analysis.
A civil party representative also appealed, the spokeswoman added.
On the 20th, Irmgard Furchner was sentenced to two years in prison with “sursis” (conditional suspension) in one of the last trials against National Socialism in Germany.
She is accused of complicity in more than 10,000 murders in the Stutthof camp in presentday Poland. She has been judged since September 2021.
The verdict followed the prosecutor’s request, which had emphasized the “extraordinary historical importance” of this trial, with an above all “symbolic” verdict.
His two lawyers had asked for the case to be dropped. Accordingly, the process did not show that she knew about the systematic murders in Stutthof.
However, the court found that “the smell of corpses was pervasive” and it “is inconceivable that the defendant was unaware of it”.
Furchner said that he is “sorry for everything that happened” and that he “regrets ever being in Stutthof at the time”.
The accused, who was between 18 and 19 years old at the time of the crime, worked as a typist and secretary for Paul Werner Hoppe, the camp commander at the time.
About 65,000 people died in Stutthof, a camp near Danzig (then Danzig). Jewish, Polish and Soviet prisoners of war were systematically murdered.
