A woman known as the ‘Secretary of Evil’ in a Nazi concentration camp has died.
Irmgard Furchner, who was a secretary to the SS commander of the infamous concentration camp Stutthof, died aged 99, German outlet Bild reports.
This comes after she last year failed in her bid to overturn a conviction for being an accessory to over 10,000 murders at the concentration camp in north Poland during World War II.
Germany’s Federal Court of Justice upheld the conviction given to Furchner in August last year.
Germany’s Federal Court of Justice upheld the conviction given to Irmgard Furchner (pictured), who was a secretary to the SS commander of the infamous Stutthof concentration camp, last year
Furchner (pictured in 1944) was 18 and 19 when she worked as a secretary at the camp
An estimated 63-65,000 people, made up of Jewish people, political prisoners, accused criminals, gay people and Jehovah’s Witnesses, were slaughtered at the camp between 1939 and 1945.
She was accused of being part of the apparatus that helped the camp near Danzig, now the Polish city of Gdansk, function. She was convicted of being an accessory to murder in 10,505 cases and an accessory to attempted murder in five cases.
At a federal court hearing in Leipzig in July, the Nazi’s lawyers tried to cast doubt over whether she could really be considered an accessory to the atrocities committed at the camp, and whether she had been fully aware of what was going on.
She was tried in a juvenile court as she was 18 and 19 at the time of the alleged crimes, and the court couldn’t establish beyond a doubt her ‘maturity of mind’ then.
But the court ruled that Furchner ‘knew and, through her work as a stenographer in the commandant’s office of the Stutthof concentration camp from June 1, 1943, to April 1, 1945, deliberately supported the fact that 10,505 prisoners were cruelly killed by gassings, by hostile conditions in the camp,’ by transportation to the Auschwitz death camp and by being sent on death marches at the end of the war.
An estimated 63-65,000 people died in Stutthof during World War II
In September 2021, she was detained for several days by Germany police after she tried running away at the start of her trial
In September 2021, she was detained for several days by Germany police after she tried running away at the start of her trial.
Furchner ran away from her care home in Norderstedt, northern Germany, and tried to take a taxi to the city’s railway station, but did not make it far.
She was held for five days, with the start of the trial being delayed thanks to her attempted escape.
While she reportedly remained silent through much of her trial, she said toward the end: ‘I’m sorry for everything that happened. I regret that I was in Stutthof at the time. I can’t say anything else.’
This is a breaking news story. More to follow.
