Concentration camp Stutthof trial: court finds former concentration camp secretary guilty

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Defendant Furchner in the courtroom in Itzehoe (on an earlier day of the trial)

Photo: Christian Charisius / AP

The district court in Itzehoe, Schleswig-Holstein, has sentenced a former secretary of the Nazi concentration camp (KZ) Stutthof to a youth sentence of two years on probation.

The court found Irmgard Furchner, now 97, guilty on Tuesday of thousands of counts of aiding and abetting murder.

According to the findings of the criminal court, the accused worked from June 1943 to April 1945 as a civilian employee in the headquarters of Stutthof near Danzig.

In doing so, she helped those in charge of the concentration camp in the systematic killing of inmates.

Because she was only 18 to 19 years old at the time of the crime, the trial took place in front of a youth chamber.

This followed the request of the public prosecutor's office with its verdict.

Most of the 15 co-plaintiffs agreed with the public prosecutor's demand for punishment.

However, one of them has spoken out against a suspended sentence.

The two defense attorneys, on the other hand, had demanded an acquittal for their client.

They justified this by saying that it could not be proven beyond a doubt that the accused knew about the systematic killings in the camp.

The 97-year-old had said in her so-called last word: "I'm sorry for everything that happened and I regret that I was in Stutthof at the time.

I can not say more."

40 negotiation days

In the Stutthof camp near Danzig, the SS held more than a hundred thousand people under appalling conditions during World War II, many of them Jews.

According to historians, about 65,000 died.

The camp was notorious for deliberately undersupplying prisoners.

Most people died from disease, exhaustion, and abuse.

However, there was also a gas chamber and a shot in the neck.

The process began on September 30, 2021.

During the 40 days of the hearing, the court heard eight of the 31 joint plaintiffs as witnesses.

The survivors of the camp reported on the suffering and mass deaths in Stutthof.

The most important witness, however, was the historical expert Stefan Hördler, who presented his report in 14 sessions.

The defense had filed a motion for bias against him, which the court rejected.

The defendant initially did not want to face the proceedings.

On the first day of the trial, she disappeared early in the morning from her retirement home in Quickborn (Pinneberg district).

Hours later, the police picked her up on a street in Hamburg.

The court issued an arrest warrant.

The then 96-year-old spent five days in custody.

Only at the very end of the process did she break her silence.

It may have been the last trial in Germany for Nazi crimes.

At the end of June 2022, the Neuruppin district court had sentenced a former guard at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp to five years in prison for being an accessory to the murder of thousands of prisoners.

According to the central office in Ludwigsburg (Baden-Württemberg), five further investigations against suspected Nazi perpetrators are pending with the public prosecutor's office, one each with the authorities in Erfurt, Coburg and Hamburg and two in Neuruppin.

The judiciary must investigate these cases because they are aiding and abetting murder.

In 1979, the Bundestag finally lifted the statute of limitations on murder and aiding and abetting murder.

This means that suspects who are fit to stand trial have to face a procedure well into old age.

wit/AFP/dpa