A German court on Tuesday sentenced a 97-year-old former Nazi concentration camp secretary to two years in prison. accused of complicity in the murder of more than 10,000 people.
In one of the last tests country on the Holocaust, Irmgard Furchner stood trial for her alleged role in the “cruel and malicious murder” of prisoners in the Stutthof camp in occupied Poland.
The ruling complies with the request of the prosecution, which underlined the “outstanding historical significance” of the trial, with an above all “symbolic” failure.
The defendant, whose face is blurred in media photos by court order, was present when the verdict was handed down, sitting in a wheelchair.
He did not speak in court, except during one of the last hearings, in December, when he broke his silence.
“I’m sorry for everything that happened”
“I’m sorry for everything that happened,” he told the northern city of Itzehoe Regional Court.
Regard the first woman prosecuted in decades in Germany for Nazi-era crimes.
furchner tried to escape when the procedure was due to begin in September 2021, escaping by taxi from the nursing home where she lives and making her way to a subway station.
She tried to elude the police for several hours before being arrested in the nearby city of Hamburg and He was detained for five days.
His lawyers had asked for his acquittal, stating that the evidence presented during the trial “had not proved beyond a doubt” that this woman knew about the murders.
The defender I was a teenager when her alleged offenses were committed and, therefore, she was brought to trial a juvenile court.
An estimated 65,000 people died in the camp near today’s Danzig, including”Jewish prisoners, Polish partisans and Russo-Soviet prisoners of war“, the prosecutors said.
Between June 1943 and April 1945, Furchner worked in the camp commandant’s office. Paul Werner-Hoppe.
Depending on the case, Furchner he took dictation of the SS officer’s orders and carried his correspondence.
The story of the victim
During the trial hearings, several Stutthof camp survivors revealed heartbreaking stories of his suffering.
Prosecutor Maxi Wantzen appreciated the courage of the witnesses, many of whom were also commanders, saying they spoke of the “absolute hell” of the camp.
“They feel it’s their duty, even if they’ve had to invoke pain over and over again to fulfill it,” she clarified.
The prosecutor told the judges that the defendant’s administrative work “ensured the proper functioning of the camp” and also gave her “knowledge of all the events in Stutthof”.
He also indicated that “life threatening conditions” such as shortages of food and water and the spread of deadly diseasesincluding typhoid, intentionally kept and they were immediately evident.
Although appalling camp conditions and forced labor claimed most of the casualties, the Nazis also used the gas chambers and structures of execution by firing squad to exterminate hundreds of people considered not fit for the job.
Wantzen stressed that, despite the defendant’s advanced age, it was “important to hold a trial of this kind”, as well as completing the historical chronicle from when the survivors are dying.
Race against time
Seventy-seven years after the end of World War II, time is running out bring Holocaust-related criminals to justice.
In recent years, several cases have been abandoned because the defendant is dead or was unable to appear in court.
The 2011 conviction of former guard John Demjanjuk, on the grounds that he was part of Hitler’s killing machine, set a legal precedent and paved the way for several trials.
Since then, courts have handed down a number of guilty verdicts on these grounds and not on any murders or atrocities directly related to the defendant.
The author is an AFP journalist
ap
Source: Clarin
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.