99-year-old woman declared accessory to over 10,000 murders
A court in Germany has upheld the conviction of a 99-year-old woman who, during the Second World War, was the secretary to the SS commander at a Nazi concentration camp.
The Federal Justice Court on Tuesday rejected the appeal of Irmgard Furchner, who was convicted of being an accessory to more than 10,000 murders and was given a two-year suspended sentence in December 2022.
Furchner was accused of being a key part of the apparatus that helped the camp near Danzig, now the Polish city of Gdansk, function, and was subsequently convicted of being an accessory to murder in 10,505 cases and an accessory to attempted murder in five cases.
At a federal court hearing in Leipzig in July, Furchner's lawyers cast doubt on whether she really was an accessory to crimes committed by the commander and other senior camp officials between 1943 and 1945, and on whether she had truly been aware of what was going on at Stutthof.
The court said that judges were convinced that Furchner “knew and, through her work as a stenographer in the commandant’s office of the Stutthof concentration camp from June 1st 1943, to April 1st 1945, deliberately supported the fact that 10,505 prisoners were cruelly killed by gassings, by hostile conditions in the camp,” by transportation to the Auschwitz death camp and by being sent on death marches at the end of the war.
Germany's main Jewish leader welcomed the ruling. “For Holocaust survivors, it is enormously important for a late form of justice to be attempted,” Josef Schuster, the head of the Central Council of Jews, said in statement.
“The legal system sent an important message today: even nearly 80 years after the Holocaust, no line can be drawn under Nazi crimes,” he added.
During the original court proceedings, prosecutors said that Furchner’s trial may be the last of its kind, however, a special federal prosecutors’ office in Ludwigsburg tasked with investigating Nazi-era war crimes says three more cases are pending with prosecutors or courts in various parts of Germany.
With any suspects now at a very advanced age, questions increasingly arise over suspects’ fitness to stand trial.
Image credits: Sky News