Irmgard Furchner Wiki- Irmgard Furchner Biography
A German court on Tuesday convicted a 97-year-old woman of being an accessory to more than 10,000 murders for her role as secretary to the SS commandant of the Nazi concentration camp Stutthof during World War Two. Irmgard Furchner was accused of being part of the apparatus that helped run the camp near Danzig, now the Polish city of Gdansk. She was given a two-year suspended sentence by the Itzehoe state court in northern Germany for being an accessory to murder in 10,505 cases and an accessory to attempted murder in five cases.
The court said the judges were satisfied that Furchner “knew and, through her work as a stenographer in the Stutthof concentration camp commandant’s office from June 1, 1943 to April 1, 1945, deliberately supported the fact that 10,505 prisoners were cruelly murdered by gassing, by the hostile conditions in the camp”, by transport to the Auschwitz death camp and by being sent on death marches at the end of the war the commandant’s office from the camp, a court statement said, “This activity was necessary for the organization of the camp and the execution of the cruel and systematic acts of killing.”
Irmgard Furchner Age
Irmgard Furchner is 97 years old.
Incidnet Dteail
The verdict and sentence were in line with the prosecutors’ demands. Defense attorneys had called for their client to be acquitted, arguing that the evidence had not shown beyond a doubt that Furchner knew about the systematic killings at the camp, meaning there was no proof of intent as required for criminal liability. .
In her final statement, Furchner said that she was sorry for what happened and that she was sorry she was at Stutthof at the time. Furchner seemed to be following the verdict intently, but she didn’t show any obvious emotion. It was not immediately clear if she would appeal, although attorney Wolf Molkentin said the defense team believes the case raises “irregular doubts” about her guilt.
But presiding judge Dominik Gross said it was “simply beyond imagination” that Furchner did not notice the killings at Stutthof, German news agency dpa reported. She said that she could see from her office the collection point where new prisoners had to wait after her arrival, and the crematorium was in constant use in the fall of 1944, with smoke billowing across the camp.
Furchner was tried in a juvenile court because she was 18 years old. she and she were 19 at the time of the alleged crimes and the court was unable to establish beyond doubt her “mental maturity” at the time of the alleged crimes. Nonetheless, Gross noted Tuesday that she could have resigned from her position at any time.
Ella Furchner did not appear at the start of her trial in September 2021, but police later detained her and detained her for several days. Efraim Zuroff, the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s chief Nazi hunter, said that “today’s verdict is the best that could be achieved, given that she was tried in a juvenile court.”
“In light of Furchner’s recent statement in court that she ‘was sorry for everything,’ we were concerned that the court might grant her defense attorney’s motion for acquittal,” Zuroff said in a statement. “However, given her claim that she had no knowledge of the murders taking place in the camp, her regret was far from convincing.” Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said of the verdict that it “shows that it is never too late to ensure that crimes of such horrific nature are held to account.”
Prosecutors in Itzehoe said during the proceedings that Furchner’s trial could be the last of her kind. However, a special federal prosecutor’s office in Ludwigsburg tasked with investigating Nazi-era war crimes says prosecutors in various parts of Germany have five more cases pending, dpa reported. The murder and accessory to murder charges are not subject to a statute of limitations.
Initially a gathering point for Jews and non-Jewish Poles retired from Danzig, Stutthof was later used as a so-called “labor education camp” where forced laborers, mainly Polish and Soviet citizens, were sent to serve sentences and often died. -1944, tens of thousands of Jews from the Baltic ghettos and Auschwitz filled the camp, along with thousands of Polish civilians swept up in the brutal Nazi suppression of the Warsaw uprising. Others incarcerated there included political prisoners, accused criminals, people suspected of homosexual activity, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. More than 60,000 people were killed in the camp.
Read Also: Who is Antonio Oseguera? Wiki, Biography, Age, Family, Arrested, Incidnet Dteail
