The ‘Secretary of evil’ has failed to overturn her conviction for her role in the death of 10,000 people at a concentration camp.
Irmgard Furchner worked as a secretary to the SS commander of the Nazi’s Stutthof concentration camp during World War Two.
Now 99 years old, she was given a two-year suspended sentence in December 2022 by a state court in Itzehoe, Germany.
The woman was accused of being part of the apparatus that helped the camp. Nicknamed the ‘Secretary of evil’, she was later convicted of being an accessory to murder in 10,505 cases and an accessory to attempted murder in five cases, The Guardian reports.
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And today (20 August), a German court has rejected her appeal and The Federal Court of Justice has upheld its prior conviction of Furchner.
During a federal court hearing in Leipzig last month, her lawyers cast doubt on whether the secretary was an accessory to crimes committed by the commander and the other senior officials at the camp.
They also attempted to start debate over whether the woman had really even been aware of what was going on at the tragically famous Stutthof.
And somewhat unsurprisingly, the initial Itzehoe court said that judges were convinced Furchner ‘knew and, through her work as a stenographer in the commandant’s office of the Stutthof concentration camp from 1 June 1943 to 1 April 1945, deliberately supported the fact that 10,505 prisoners were cruelly killed by gassings, by hostile conditions in the camp’, by transportation to the death camp of Auschwitz and by being sent on death marches at the end of the Second World War.
During the original proceedings, prosecutors said the woman’s trial may be the last of its kind.
However, according to a special federal prosecutors’ office in Ludwigsburg tasked with investigating Nazi-era war crimes, three more cases are pending with prosecutors or courts in different areas of Germany.
After today’s ruling, upholding the conviction of the ex-Nazi concentration camp secretary, Germany’s main Jewis leader welcomed it.
The head of the Central Council of Jews, Josef Schuster, said in a statement: “For Holocaust survivors, it is enormously important for a late form of justice to be attempted.
“The legal system sent an important message today: even nearly 80 years after the Holocaust, no line can be drawn under Nazi crimes.”
Back in 2021, an arrest warrant was issued for Furchner after she failed to attend the beginning of her trial.
Court spokesperson, Frederike Milhoffer, said as per The Guardian: "She left her home early in the morning in a taxi in the direction of a metro station."
She was later caught and a doctor assessed her health to see whether she could be detained.
Topics: World War 2, World News
Jess Battison