Irmgard Furchner‘s trial images were to be dim, per the court’s directive.
The murder of more than 10,500 persons was commit with the help of a former secretary who worked for the Nazi camp commander.
Irmgard Furchner, now 97, worked in Stutthof as a young shorthand typist from 1943 until 1945.
Furchner received a two-year suspended sentence and became the first woman to face trial for Nazi crimes in decades.Despite being a civilian employee. The judge concluded that she had full knowledge of all camp activities.
Estimates state that 65,000 people perished in Stutthof in horrible conditions, including Jewish prisoners, non-Jewish Poles, and captured Soviet soldiers.
Furchner was held responsible for the attempted murder of five other people as well as the murder of 10,505 people. She was try in a special juvenile court since, at the time, she was just 18 or 19 years old.
Detainees were murder at Stutthof, a concentration camp close to the present-day Polish city of Gdansk, starting in June 1944.
Thousands of them perished in gas chambers.
The court in Itzehoe, Germany, heard testimony from camp survivors, some of whom passed away during the trial.
Stutthof commandant Paul-Werner Hoppe serve five years in prison for being an accessory to murder after being sentenced in 1955.
Since John Demjanjuk, a former Nazi death camp guard, was found guilty in 2011, several prosecutions have been conduct in Germany, setting the precedent that serving as a guard was sufficient to establish guilt.
Additionally, because Furchner handled correspondence about Stutthof prisoners and reported directly to the camp commander, this decision indicated that she approved.
She remained silent throughout the trial for 40 days before finally saying, “I’m sorry for everything that happened,” in front of the judge.
She was only able to utter, “I regret being at Stutthof at the moment.”
Being one of the numerous typists in Hoppe’s office raise questions about what she knew, according to her defense attorneys, who argue she should be found not guilty.
Furchner wed Heinz Furchstam, an SS squad leader she undoubtedly met after the war.
She then started working as an office assistant in a tiny town in northern Germany. Her spouse passed away in 1972.
Manfred Goldberg, a survivor, and co-plaintiff, visited Stutthof in 2017 alongside the Prince and Princess of Wales.
Stefan Hördler played a significant part in the trial by accompanying two judges to the historian.
The visit revealed that Furchner had access to some of the worst camp conditions from the commandant’s office.
The historian testified at the trial that between June and October 1944, 27 vehicles carrying 48,000 inmates arrived at Stutthof after the Nazis decided to enlarge the camp and accelerate mass slaughter by using Zyklon B gas.
According to Mr. Hördler, Hoppe’s office served as the “nerve center” for all activity at Stutthof.
He delivered testimony from Furchner‘s husband from 1954, which included the following: “The Stutthof camp was a gas chamber. The personnel at the commandant’s headquarters discussed it.”