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Gas chamber in the Stutthof Concentration Camp Memorial: Was the secretary Irmgard Furchner able to see how the women were led there?
Photo: Bruce Adams / Getty Images
For almost two years, from 1943 to 1945, Irmgard Furchner sat as the first stenographer and secretary at a desk in the headquarters of the Stutthof concentration camp, Department 1. She was then 18, 19 years old, and now she is 96. Prosecutor Maxi Wantzen has the Pensioner charged with complicity in insidious and cruel murder in 11,412 cases and complicity in attempted murder in 18 other cases.
Now Irmgard Furchner could soon have to answer in court.
According to SPIEGEL information, the Itzehoe district court has now received the report on the ability of the very old defendants to stand trial.
It is the second.
The first report by a doctor from the health department of the district of Pinneberg certified that the pensioner had heart diseases, which excluded the very old defendants from being able to stand trial.
The presiding judge then commissioned a specialist to carry out an assessment.
By the beginning of July, the chamber now wants to decide whether it will allow the main proceedings and the secondary suits.
The trial will be about the question: How much did a woman who never entered the camp see behind her desk about the killing?
From June 1, 1943 to April 1, 1945, Irmgard Furchner noted what SS-Sturmbannführer Paul Werner Hoppe shouted and dictated to her.
As a camp commandant, Hoppe wrote execution orders, deportation lists for the trains to Auschwitz and instructions on mass killings using poison gas.
Irmgard Furchner passed on his commands in the form of letters, telex or radio messages.
The National Socialists established the Stutthof camp near Danzig as an internment camp for more than 100,000 Jews and political opponents.
At least 65,000 people were murdered, shot, hanged, gassed and tortured to death.
They froze to death, starved, worked their way to death.
They died of epidemics due to the hygienic conditions.
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