A German court upholds the conviction of a former secretary at a Nazi concentration camp, age 99

BERLIN (AP) — A German court on Tuesday rejected an appeal by a 99-year-old woman who was convicted of being an accessory to more than 10,000 murders for her role as a secretary to the SS commander of the Nazis’ Stutthof concentration camp during World War II.

The Federal Court of Justice upheld the conviction of Irmgard Furchner, who was given a two-year suspended sentence in December 2022 by a state court in Itzehoe in northern Germany.

She was accused of being part of the apparatus that helped the camp near Danzig, now the Polish city of Gdansk, function. She was convicted of being an accessory to murder in 10,505 cases and an accessory to attempted murder in five cases.

At a federal court hearing in Leipzig last month, Furchner’s lawyers cast doubt on whether she really was an accessory to crimes committed by the commander and other senior camp officials, and on whether she had truly been aware of what was going on at Stutthof.

https://apnews.com/article/germany-nazi-trial-stutthof-secretary-appeal-99-8dd7525a3c1b1f0cb8daca0518939f06