IRMGARD FURCHNER is the first woman to be tried in Germany for decades for crimes committed under the Nazi regime.
MO12345LEMONDE With AFP
It was one of the last trials of the Nazi era in Germany. A former secretary of a 97 -year -old concentration camp was sentenced Tuesday, December 20 to two years in suspended prison sentence. Irmgard Furchner, accused of complicity in murders in more than 10,000 cases at the Stutthof concentration camp in current Poland, had been tried since September 2021 before the court of Itzehoe, in northern Germany.
This conviction is in accordance with the requisitions of the prosecution which had stressed the “exceptional historical meaning” of this trial, with a judgment with a character above all “symbolic”. The nonagenarian, wearing a white cap, was present at the pronouncement of the verdict that she listened to sitting in her wheelchair. She had not expressed herself in front of the court, except during one of the very last audiences, in December, where she had formulated regrets. “I am sorry for everything that happened. I regret having been to Stutthof at that time,” she said.
IRMGARD FURCHNER is the first woman to be tried in Germany for decades for the crimes committed under the Nazi regime. She had tried to escape her trial by fleeing on the day of opening hearings. She had left her accommodation by taxi in a home for the elderly, but did not show up in court. It had been found a few hours later.
Elderly at the time of the facts of 18 to 19 years old, M me fuchner, who worked as dactylographer and secretary of the camp commander, Paul Werner Hoppe, had a position “of an essential meaning” In the inhuman system of the camp, said Maxi Wantzen prosecutor in his requisitions.
Her lawyers had claimed her acquittal, believing that it had not been proven that she was aware of the murders practiced systematically in Stutthof. Due to his age at the time of the facts, Irmgard Farchner was tried before a special courtyard for young people. 2> access to all documents deemed confidential
A Stutthof, a camp near Gdansk [Dantzig at the time] where around 65,000 people, “Jewish detainees, Polish prisoners and Soviet war prisoners, perished systematically murdered. Throughout the trial, several survivors testified, believing, according to the prosecutor, that “it was their duty to speak, even if they had to overcome their pain to do so”.
They lived in disastrous conditions intended to kill them slowly. Most prisoners perished hungry, thirst, diseases, such as typhus, and exhaustion because of forced work. To execute the weakest, the camp had gas chambers and another place, typical of Nazi Germany, where the victim was killed in the neck by pretending a medical examination.
According to the prosecutor, the crimes committed would not have been possible without the office system of which M me furchner was one of the cogs. She benefited from the commander’s confidence and had access to all the documents deemed confidential.
Seventy-seven years after the end of the Second World War, Germany continues to seek former Nazi criminals still alive, illustrating the increased, although late, severity of its justice. Very few women involved in Nazi crimes have been continued. Adolf Hitler’s private secretary, Traudl Junge, has never been worried until his death in 2002.
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The case law of the 2011 condemnation of John Demjanjuk, a goalkeeper of the Sobibor camp in 1943, at five years in prison, now makes it possible to continue for complicity of tens of thousands of assassinations n ‘ No matter what auxiliary in a concentration camp, from the accountant to. In June, a former goalkeeper of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp (northern Berlin), 101, was sentenced to five years in prison.