Germany: trial of former Nazi camp secretary Stutthof begins

Published on : 10/19/2021 – 11:12

A 96-year-old former Nazi concentration camp secretary, who briefly fled on the opening day of her trial in Germany before being arrested, is on trial from Tuesday, October 19.

Drastic security measures were ordered by the court of Itzehoe (north) to allow the presence of Irmgard Furchner before the court, where she must answer for complicity in murder in more than 10,000 cases.

Camp Commander’s Secretary

The prosecution accuses him of having participated, through his administrative functions, in the murder of detainees in the Stutthof concentration camp, in present-day Poland. Aged between 18 and 19, she worked there as a typist and secretary to the camp commander, Paul Werner Hoppe, between June 1943 and April 1945.

In this camp near the city of Gdansk (Danzig at the time) where 65,000 people perished, “Jewish detainees, Polish partisans and Soviet prisoners of war” were systematically murdered, recalled the prosecution.

The only woman involved in Nazism to stand trial in decades in Germany, Irmgard Furchner, who lives in a retirement home near Hamburg, fled before her trial began on September 30.

An arrest warrant had been issued against the nonagenarian, creating amazement in the court and the indignation of representatives of the victims of Nazi barbarism.

“Contempt for the survivors”

At the end of an incredible day, she was found and finally placed in pre-trial detention, before being released a week later.

Before the opening of her trial, the accused had announced in a letter addressed to the President of the Court that she did not want to appear before her judges.

His behavior caused consternation. “This shows contempt for survivors and the rule of law,” lamented AFP Christoph Heubner, vice-chairman of the Auschwitz Committee.

“Even if this woman is very old, could the court not have taken precautions?” He also noted, wondering moreover about the complicity from which she was able to benefit.

“Sufficiently healthy to flee, sufficiently healthy to go to prison!”, Had for his part launched on Twitter Efraim Zuroff, the president of the Simon Wiesenthal Center who tracks the Nazis still alive.

Another ongoing Nazi trial

So far, the four former guards or employees of Nazi camps condemned for ten years in Germany had all sat in the box of the accused.

Another accused, aged 100, began to appear on October 7 in the Brandenburg-sur-Havel court (northeast), where he claims his innocence.

The oldest accused of Nazi crimes, this former non-commissioned officer of the SS “Totenkopf” (“Skull”) division is being prosecuted for “complicity in the murders” of 3,518 prisoners while operating in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, between 1942 and 1945.

Seventy-six years after the end of World War II, German justice continues to search for surviving former Nazi criminals.

Some 4,000 women have served as guards in concentration camps, according to historians.

With AFP