On video: the court in Inchon is at the beginning of the trial of a disappeared Nazi secretary (Photo: Reuters)
97-year-old Irmgard Forchner, who served as a secretary to an SS officer in the Stutthof concentration camp in Nazi Germany, was found guilty in court today (Tuesday) of aiding and abetting 10,505 murders.
In what may be the last Nazi war crimes trial, Forchner has been in court in Germany for more than a year while the prosecution presented its case against her.
Judge Dominique Gross handed down the two-year suspended sentence this morning in the Itzhou state court, according to a report by the German news agency DPA.
According to the judge, the accused was found guilty of aiding the murder of 10,505 people, along with five cases of attempted murder in the concentration camp.
"She assisted and supported those who were in charge of the camp in the systematic murder of the prisoners in June 1943-April 1945 by virtue of her position as a shorthand and typist in the office responsible for the camp."
Forchner refused to answer questions during the trial, but said in her closing remarks that she regrets what happened and regrets being there at the time.
Irmgard Forkner on the way to trial (photo: screenshot, Twitter)
The "Secretary of Evil", as she was called, was 18 years old when she was sent to work for the commander of the Stotthof camp, where more than 60 thousand people were murdered.
She was tried under the juvenile law, due to her age at the time of the crimes.
Her lawyers requested an acquittal, saying that the evidence did not prove beyond any doubt that Forchner knew about the systematic murder in the camp, that is, there is no proof of intent, as required by the criminal law.
Manfred Goldberg, a survivor of the Stutthof camp, told "Sky News" that "it was impossible not to know what was really happening there", contrary to Forchner's claim that she was not aware of the atrocities.
"Bodies were scattered throughout the camp."
According to Shivonne Robbins, a "Sky News" reporter who visited the camp, "Historians told us that sick, starving and terrified prisoners were walking around the building where Forkner's office is all day long. Some of them are naked, and still Heath claimed she didn't see them. She also didn't hear the screams coming from the gas chambers or saw the scattered bodies.
"And there were also fires - from the crematorium, which burned 24 hours a day, and then when it was impossible to meet the demand, the Nazis piled the bodies in piles outside the crematorium. It was impossible not to smell the terrible stench. After about 80 years, the lie did not succeed, and the sentence was handed down - Which proves that justice has no time limit, and age cannot be used as a defense."
Sent to the camp at the age of 18 (photo: screenshot, Twitter)
About one hundred thousand people were deported to the Stutthof camp in World War II.
Behind the electrified barbed wire fences, conditions were terrible.
Many prisoners died from a typhus epidemic that swept through the population, and others who were too weak to work were murdered by the guards.
Stutthof is also infamously remembered for the fact that in his last days, as the Red Army approached, thousands of Assyrians were moved by the guards on the grounds that they were "evacuees".
According to Rainer Schultz, a German historian at the University of Essex, "They put the prisoners in small boats which they pushed into the Baltic Sea. People died in these boats due to exposure to the sun and lack of water and food."
In recent years, several trials have been held for camp seekers and people who worked in the camps, most of whom are now in their 80s and 90s.
According to Schultz, Forchner's trial "may be the last trial for Nazi war crimes."
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