There it is now. Irmgard F., 96 years old, who did the paperwork as a young woman in the Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig and is now a suspected helper in the murder machinery before the Itzehoe district court. When this Nazi trial, one of the last in the world, was supposed to begin at the end of September, her place was left empty, to the astonishment of the observers. The defendant ran away from her nursing home in Quickborn near Hamburg before the appointment, the police picked her up on a street hours later, and the Itzehoe district court issued a temporary arrest warrant. This time she is pushed into this converted hall.
A cloudy morning in the industrial area of Itzehoe, Schleswig-Holstein. The district court has moved into the China Logistic Center to accommodate the reporters and spectators. First floor, low ceilings, gray carpeting. There are demonstrators outside, a vigil, and police officers next to them. “Over 11,000 murders do not expire,” reads a banner. “No forgiveness, no forgetting. Stutthof 1939-45. Never again.” Inside, Irmgard F. leans in a blue wheelchair between panes of plexiglass that are supposed to protect her from viruses; with her are a doctor and her defense attorney. First of all, F. is buckled up with belts, wearing a mask in front of his nose and mouth. A headscarf covers her gray hair, and she also wears sunglasses.
She takes all of this off when the cameras are turned off and it starts. “The defendant is present,” says Dominik Groß, the presiding judge, and has her personal details confirmed. “Can you understand me?” He asks. “Yes,” she replies. You don’t hear much more from her. Irmgard F., born in 1925 near Danzig, German, lives in a senior citizen’s home in northern Germany, widowed, pensioner. Then the indictment is read out.
The public prosecutor’s office accuses Irmgard F. of having assisted murder in more than 11,000 cases from June 1943 to April 1945. She was the secretary of the concentration camp commandant and SS member Paul Werner Hoppe. You have “ensured the smooth functioning of the camp,” says the prosecutor. She was aware of the systematic killing, the state-ordered mass murder, “partly down to the last detail”.
The face of the accused usually remains unmoved
The prosecutor reports in detail about the shooting in the neck where the victims were deceived into saying that they were being measured. About the agonizing death in the gas chamber with Zyklon B, the cramped, discolored bodies. About typhus and the other deadly conditions in Stutthof, the crematorium and the stake, the deportations to Auschwitz.
The typist F. was then 18, then 19 years old. Negotiations are therefore held in front of the youth chamber, although more than three quarters of a century has passed since then. The accused’s face usually remains motionless, sometimes movements can be seen, she runs her hand over her cheeks and eyes. When she needs to go to the bathroom, she takes short breaks. In any case, the sessions only last a maximum of two hours each.
Irmgard F. recently said again that she was not aware of any guilt, that she did not know anything. In the trial of her boss Hoppe, who was convicted in 1957 and was soon dismissed, and afterwards, she had repeatedly witnessed that the former statements may not be used. She doesn’t say anything at the trial. You will not answer any questions, explains her lawyer Wolf Molkentin and makes a written statement. He recognizes the importance of the trial for the victims, he does not deny “the terrible murderous incident”. His client does not deny the crimes, but Molkentin expresses doubts about her co-responsibility.
The district court recognizes a sufficient suspicion, the taking of evidence will begin in the coming week. Several representatives of the 30 co-plaintiffs, survivors and relatives of the dead, demand a site inspection in Stutthof. Everyone in the concentration camp “clearly heard what was happening there acoustically and visually,” says lawyer Christoph Rückel.
The judiciary has been frustrating punishment long enough, says a lawyer
The court still wants to discuss this inspection, this trip to Stutthof. For the time being, it accepts the request that the main hearing be recorded. The process is said to have “outstanding historical significance”. Precisely for this reason, Hans-Jürgen Förster, the lawyer for secondary plaintiffs from Israel and Australia, was surprised that he had to make this request for a recording at all.
In any case, some people are amazed at how detailed the judge Groß is with the applications. You have to be aware of the issue, says lawyer Förster. The colleague Mehmet Daimagüler, who represents the Stutthof survivor Marga Griesbach, becomes even clearer: This is not about shoplifting, but about one of the last attempts to come to terms with Nazi injustice. The judiciary was said to have been a thwarting operation for long enough, the survivors had waited a lifetime. Now they are waiting for the trial day next Tuesday.