A 96-year-old former Nazi concentration camp secretary, who briefly fled the day of her trial in Germany before being arrested, is on trial from Tuesday, October 19.
Drastic security measures have been ordered by the court of Itzehoe (north) to allow the presence of Irmgard Furchner in court, where she must answer for complicity in murder in more than 10,000 cases.
Read also Germany: the former secretary of a concentration camp who fled before his trial has been found
The prosecution accuses him of having participated through his administrative functions in the murder of detainees in the Stutthof concentration camp, in present-day Poland. Aged between 18 and 19, she worked there as a typist and secretary to the camp commander, Paul Werner Hoppe, between June 1943 and April 1945. In this camp near the city of Gdansk (Danzig at the time) where they died 65,000 people,
"Jewish detainees, Polish partisans and Soviet prisoners of war"
were systematically murdered, recalled the prosecution.
The only woman involved in Nazism to stand trial in decades in Germany, Irmgard Furchner, who lives in a retirement home near Hamburg, fled before her trial began on September 30.
An arrest warrant had been issued against the nonagenarian, creating amazement in the court and the indignation of representatives of the victims of Nazi barbarism.
At the end of an incredible day, she was found and finally placed in pre-trial detention, before being released a week later.
Healthy enough to escape, healthy enough to go to jail!
"
Efraim Zuroff, President of the Simon Wiesenthal Center
Before the opening of her trial, the accused had announced in a letter addressed to the President of the Court that she did not want to appear before her judges. His behavior caused consternation.
"This shows contempt for survivors and the rule of law,"
lamented AFP Christoph Heubner, vice-president of the Auschwitz Committee.
"Even though this woman is very old, couldn't the court have taken precautions?"
, he had also noted, also wondering about the complicity from which she was able to benefit.
"Healthy enough to escape, healthy enough to go to jail!"
, had for his part launched on Twitter Efraim Zuroff,the president of the Simon Wiesenthal Center who tracks down the Nazis who are still alive.
Read also Germany: at the Schütz trial, former SS master corporal, memory and denial
So far, the four former guards or employees of Nazi camps condemned for ten years in Germany had all sat in the box of the accused.
Another accused, aged 100, has since started to appear on October 7 in the Brandenburg an der Havel court (north-east), where he claims his innocence.
The oldest accused of Nazi crimes, this former non-commissioned officer of the SS "Totenkopf" ("Skull") division is being prosecuted for
"complicity in the murders"
of 3,518 prisoners when he was operating in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, between 1942 and 1945.
Seventy-six years after the end of World War II, German justice continues to search for former Nazi criminals who are still alive.
Some 4,000 women have served as guards in concentration camps, according to historians.
