A two-year suspended prison sentence was requested against a former secretary of a Nazi concentration camp, aged 97, by the prosecution on Tuesday at the court in Itzehoe (northern Germany).
The trial of Irmgard Furchner, accused of complicity in murder in more than 11,000 cases at the Stutthof concentration camp in present-day Poland, is one of the last Nazi-era trials in Germany.
The accused fled
The trial had started in an incredible way when the accused had fled the day of the opening of the hearings. The nonagenarian had not appeared in court as planned. She was found after a few hours.
Aged 18 to 19 at the time, the defendant, who worked as a typist and secretary to the camp commandant, Paul Werner Hoppe, occupied a position “of essential significancein the inhuman system of the camp, prosecutor Maxi Wantzen said in her submissions on Tuesday. “She ensured that the camp could continue to function“, she added.
65,000 people murdered
In Stutthof, a camp near the city of Gdansk (Dantzig at the time) where approximately 65,000 people perished, “Jewish prisoners, Polish partisans and Soviet prisoners of warwere systematically murdered, according to historians.
Seventy-seven years after the end of the Second World War, Germany continues to search for former Nazi criminals still alive, illustrating the increased severity, although considered very belated by the victims, of its justice.
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