Former Nazi concentration camp secretary faces indictment 0:48
(CNN) -
The trial of a 96-year-old former Nazi concentration camp secretary finally began in Germany, weeks after she went on the run just before she was due to appear in court.
The woman, named by the German media as Irmgard Furchner, is accused of being an accessory to murder in more than 11,000 cases, when she was a stenographer and typist in the office of the commander of the Stutthof camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.
He is accused of having assisted those responsible for the camp in the systematic murder of prisoners between June 1943 and April 1945, according to a judicial indictment.
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Furchner's trial in Itzehoe, northern Germany, began on Tuesday, after being postponed from September 30, when she fled for several hours before being captured by local authorities.
The charges against the defendant could not be read until she was present.
She is one of the first women to stand trial in decades for alleged crimes during the Nazi era.
The woman, named by the German media as Irmgard Furchner, is accused of being an accessory to murder in more than 11,000 cases.
As the 96-year-old woman was a teenager at the time of the alleged crimes, Furchner faces trial before a Chamber of Juvenile Court.
The court's press office confirmed to CNN that he appeared Tuesday, and did not speak while the charges were read.
Television images showed him entering the court in a wheelchair, his face barely visible behind a white mask and a handkerchief partially covering his face.
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CNN contacted one of the defendant's attorneys for comment.
According to the Ludwigsburg Central Office, charged with investigating Nazi crimes, around 65,000 people died in the Stutthof concentration camp and its sub-camps, as well as in the so-called death marches at the end of the war.
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In July 2020, the Hamburg Regional Court sentenced Bruno D., a former guard from Stutthof who was then 93 years old, to two years' probation.
The former guard supervised the Stutthof prisoners from August 1944 to April 1945 and was charged with 5,230 counts of complicity to murder during his time as a guard for the SS (the Schutzstaffel, a Nazi military, police and prison organization) in the countryside.
The guard also appeared in juvenile court because he was 17 at the time he served in the SS.
Nazi Germany
