JERUSALEM, Israel – In what may be one of the final verdicts rendered against a person guilty of criminal actions during the Nazi era, a German court has convicted a 97-year-old former secretary who worked as a stenographer at the Stutthof concentration camp. Irmgard Furchner was convicted of accessory to murder in more than 10,505 cases of camp inmates who were killed.
Furchner was secretary to the SS comander at Stutthof. She allegedly “aided and abetted those in charge of the camp in the systematic killing of those imprisoned there between June 1943 and April 1945 in her function as a stenographer and typist.” She was 18 at the time, so the trial was conducted in juvenile court.
After the trial, which lasted more than a year, the state court in northern Germany gave Furchner a 2-year suspended sentence, according to the German news agency Deutsche Presse-Agentur, which was in line with the goal of the prosecution. Prosecutor Maxi Wantzen said last month, “these proceedings are of outstanding historical significance.”
During earlier testimony, Wantzen said Furchner would have been able to see large portions of the Stutthof camp from her office, including an induction area where new prisoners arrived. She also must have been able to see and smell smoke from the burning of bodies at the crematorium, the prosecutor added.
According to a report in Agence France Presse, Furchner expressed regret for her actions for the first time near the end of the trial. She told the courtroom in the town of Itzehoe, “I’m sorry about everything that happened.”
It’s estimated that 65,000 people perished at the Stutthof camp near what today is Gdansk, Poland.
Wantzen thanked the people who testified at the trial for being witnesses who had to relive the “absolute hell” of the camp. She added, “They feel it is their duty, even though they had to summon the pain again and again to fulfill it.”
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