During the Second World War, then 18 years old, Irmgard Furchner was the typist and secretary of the commander of the Nazi concentration camp of Stutthof Paul Werner Hoppe. On Tuesday, at the age of 97, this ex-secretary was found guilty of “complicity in murder” in more than 10,000 cases in this camp located in present-day Poland.
The woman was given a two-year suspended prison sentence, in accordance with the requisitions of the prosecution which had underlined the “exceptional historical significance” of this trial, with a judgment above all “symbolic”, sending an “important signal” to the last survivors of the crimes then committed. The nonagenarian had been on trial since September 2021 before the Court of Itzehoe, in northern Germany.
Nothing of “a naive young secretary”
Wearing a white beret, the woman was present at the reading of the verdict, which she listened to sitting in her wheelchair. She had not spoken before this court, except during one of the very last hearings, in December: “I am sorry for everything that happened. I regret having been in Stutthof at that time”.
During his trial, his defense wanted to justify that it had no knowledge of the systematic murders in Stutthof. The argument was dismissed by the judges. Refuting the idea that she had been, as she claimed, “a naïve young secretary”, the Court considered that “nothing” had been “hidden from the accused”.
The nonagenarian “had a relationship of trust” with the commander, the verdict continues. Typing the letters of the latter, Irmgard Furchner had access to “confidential information”. The support of the Nazi Machine Secretary “consisted of putting the commanding officer’s orders in writing,” Judge Gross explained.
At Stutthof, a camp near Gdansk (Dantzig at the time) where around 65,000 people perished, Jewish prisoners, Polish partisans and Soviet prisoners of war were systematically murdered.