Second World War: Court opens proceedings against 96-year-old ex-secretary of the Stutthof concentration camp

The Itzehoe Regional Court has opened the main proceedings against a former secretary of the Stutthof Nazi concentration camp.

The Great Youth Chamber had approved charges of complicity in murder and attempted murder in more than 11,000 cases, the court said on Friday.

The then adolescent is accused of having worked as a stenographer and typist for the camp commandant of the former Stutthof concentration camp between June 1943 and April 1945 "helping those responsible at the camp with the systematic killing of those imprisoned there".

According to the information provided, the chamber considers the now 96-year-old woman to be sufficiently suspicious of having acted aiding and abetting 11,387 cases of murder, seven of which are said to have remained an attempt. The proceedings should be heard before the youth chamber because the defendant was 18 or 19 years old at the time of the act and thus an adolescent within the meaning of the Youth Courts Act. The trial is scheduled to begin on September 30th.

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.

In the Stutthof camp near Danzig, the SS held more than a hundred thousand people prisoner in poor conditions during the Second World War, including many Jews.

About 65,000 people died.

As a camp, Stutthof was notorious for the deliberately inadequate supply and hostile conditions.

Most of the prisoners died of disease and exhaustion.

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 guard as an accessory to murder.

A direct involvement in killings is not necessary.

According to a spokesman for the public prosecutor's office, the indictment was preceded by an elaborate, lengthy investigation.

Witnesses in the USA and Israel were interviewed for this.

A historian was also commissioned to obtain more information about the function of the accused within the camp administration.

awe / cfm