German court upholds conviction of former Nazi camp secretary
A German court on Tuesday rejected an appeal by Irmgard Furchner, 99, who was convicted in 2022 for complicity in the murder of over 10,000 people during the Holocaust.
Defendant Irmgard Furchner. Photo: Christian Charisius/POOL/AFP via Getty Images.
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“The legal system sent an important message today: Even nearly 80 years after the Holocaust, no line can be drawn under Nazi crimes,” he added.
About 65,000 people died at Stutthof—the first Nazi concentration camp set up outside Germany during World War Two and the last to be liberated—including Jewish prisoners, Polish political prisoners and captured Soviet soldiers, some of whom were gassed to death.
Furchner, who married an SS squad leader after the war, made international headlines when she tried to flee as her trial was set to begin in September 2021, leaving the retirement home where she lives and heading to a metro station. She was caught after several hours in the nearby city of Hamburg and held in custody for five days.
During the trial, survivors of the camp, some of whom have since died, testified before the court, while a historian told the court that 27 transports carrying 48,000 people arrived at Stutthof between June and October 1944, after the Nazis decided to expand the camp and speed up their mass murder with the use of Zyklon B gas.
After 40 days of silence, she told the court: “I’m sorry about everything that happened. I regret that I was in Stutthof at the time—that’s all I can say.”
Presiding judge Dominik Gross said during the trial it was “beyond imagination” that Furchner could not have noticed the smoke and stench of mass killing, stating, “The defendant could have quit at any time.”
JNS
