A German court has upheld the conviction of Irmgard Furchner, a 99-year-old former Nazi concentration camp secretary, dismissing her appeal against the charges of aiding and abetting murder in over 10,500 cases and attempted murder in five cases. Furchner, who was employed as a stenographer at the Stutthof concentration camp near the city of Gdansk, Poland, during the Nazi period, received a two-year suspended youth sentence from the Itzhoe Regional Court in 2022. This sentence was based on her involvement at the camp when she was between 18 and 19 years old.
The Stutthof camp, run by the SS from 1943 to 1945, saw the deaths of over 60,000 people. Furchner’s responsibilities included typing up the camp commandant’s orders and maintaining records, which were deemed crucial to the camp’s operation. The regional court found that her role significantly contributed to the systematic killing of prisoners. The Federal Court of Justice’s 5th Criminal Senate, which delivered the recent judgment, affirmed that Furchner’s work was vital in supporting the camp’s leadership and facilitating the execution of prisoners.
While upholding her conviction, the federal court outlined that Furchner had not only assisted in the camp’s daily operations but maintained a trusting relationship with the camp commander and his adjutants, thereby becoming complicit in the systematic atrocities carried out at Stutthof. These horrors included gassing, creating inhumane living conditions, death marches, and transporting prisoners to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp.
The ruling follows the legal precedent set by the conviction of former Nazi concentration camp guard John Demjanjuk, which allowed for the conviction of individuals for being accessories to murder. This precedent has been upheld in subsequent cases, such as those involving Oskar Gröning, Bruno Dey, and Josef Schuetz. For more details, the full press release can be read on the Federal Court of Justice website.