It is probably one of the last opportunities to get someone responsible for Nazi crimes in court. Irmgard F., the 96-year-old defendant at the Itzehoe regional court, was a secretary in the Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig, where 65,000 people died. From 1943 to 1945 she was a typist for camp commandant Paul Werner Hoppe.
So many journalists registered for the trial last Thursday that it had to be relocated to an improvised hall in the Itzeho industrial area. But the accused, Irmgard F., did not appear, she was fleeting. So there were no pictures of the woman charged with complicity in more than 11,000 cases.
Media all over the world are reporting on the trial of the concentration camp secretary, which has now been adjourned to mid-October, against the “Nazi grandma in jail,” as the TV station Welt then called it, because Irmgard F. was caught later on Thursday and came into custody. In the video from Welt (formerly N24), which the broadcaster has since deleted, supposedly current pictures by Irmgard F. were shown. The fatal mistake: The unrecognizable photo did not show the accused, but the Holocaust survivor Anita Lasker-Wallfisch.
“Unfortunately, we made a serious mistake in the photo research,” said Kristina Faßler, spokeswoman for Welt on Tuesday. “We deeply regret that. We sincerely and sincerely apologize to Anita Lasker-Wallfisch for this. Of course we have deleted the video everywhere.”
When asked by the SZ how this mix-up could have come about, Faßler replied that “they did not look closely” when looking for images and that they were very annoyed about it. Anita Lasker-Wallfisch will apologize in writing.
The mistake was noticed by NDR journalist and right-wing extremism expert Julian Feldmann. Not only the broadcaster Welt, it noticed on Twitter, but also on several English-language online media, false and not defaced pictures of the accused Irmgard F. In addition to the photo of Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, 97, a cellist and well-known survivor of the girls’ orchestra in Auschwitz concentration camp, one that actually shows Judit Sperling was also misplaced. Judit Sperling, 99, is a joint plaintiff in the trial against Irmgard F. She and her mother were deported to the Stutthof concentration camp in 1944, and her husband and 13-year-old cousin were killed.