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Schleswig-Holstein: Ex-typist at the Stutthof concentration camp charged with aiding in murder

2021-02-05T14:35:14.994Z


Around 65,000 people died in the Stutthof extermination camp near Danzig during World War II. Now a former secretary of the camp is being charged with complicity in murder in more than ten thousand cases.


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The concentration and later extermination camp in Stutthof near Danzig

Photo: 

Piotr Wittman / dpa

The Itzehoe public prosecutor's office in Schleswig-Holstein has brought charges against a former typist at the Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig.

Accordingly, it is about the allegation of complicity in murder in more than ten thousand cases, as the prosecution said.

First the "Hamburger Abendblatt" reported.

The woman was accused of having acted as a typist and typist for the camp commandant "to have helped those responsible at the camp with the systematic killing of Jewish prisoners, Polish partisans and Soviet Russian prisoners of war," it said.

The now 95-year-old is said to have made an important contribution in the concentration camp as the camp commandant's secretary.

The accused from the Pinneberg district was also accused of aiding and abetting attempted murder in the period from 1943 to 1945, it said.

About 65,000 people died in Stutthof

The public prosecutor justified the allegations with the purpose of the camp.

During the Second World War, the SS held more than a hundred thousand people prisoner in Stutthof under the worst of conditions, including many Jews.

About 65,000 people died.

As an extermination camp, Stutthof was notorious for deliberately inadequate supplies and hostile conditions.

Most of the prisoners died of disease and exhaustion.

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A gas chamber in the Stutthof extermination camp near Danzig

Photo: Bruce Adams-Pool / Getty Images

According to the spokesman, the indictment took place last week at the Itzehoe district court.

The youth chamber is responsible because the woman was growing up at the time of the acts.

The investigations had been going on since 2016. It was a very complex and time-consuming process in which witnesses in the USA and Israel were heard.

A historian was also commissioned to investigate.

Number of charges in previous years

In the past few years there had been a whole series of charges and trials against former members of the security and administration teams of the two concentration and extermination camps, Auschwitz and Stutthof.

Most recently, in July 2020, the district court in Hamburg sentenced a 93-year-old former Stutthof security guard to a two-year suspended sentence under juvenile law for aiding and abetting murder in 5232 cases.

The judgment is now final.

Prosecution for Nazi crimes is only possible in Germany for murder or aiding and abetting; other conceivable allegations are statute-barred.

Guard duty in a concentration camp alone is not enough.

Only in the case of death and extermination camps, the purpose of which was the systematic killing of all prisoners, is, according to German jurisprudence, a mere membership of the guards as an accessory to murder.

A direct involvement in killings is not necessary.

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hba / AFP / dpa

Source: spiegel

All life articles on 2021-02-05

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