• A former Nazi concentration camp secretary was convicted of accessory to murder.
• Irmgard Furchner received a two-year suspended sentence in Itzehoe.
• She was 18 and 19 when she worked as the SS commander’s secretary in Stutthof during World War II.

A 97-year-old former Nazi concentration camp secretary was convicted of accessory to murder on Tuesday.

Irmgard Furchner received a two-year suspended sentence in Itzehoe, according to DPA. She was 18 and 19 when she worked as the SS commander’s secretary in Stutthof during World War II.

Furchner was charged with “assisting those in authority at the former Stutthof concentration camp with the methodical murdering of inmates” due to her work as a shorthand typist/secretary in the Camp Commandant’s Office between June 1943 and April 1945.

Non-killers in concentration camps have been convicted of assisting and abetting murder before. Oskar Gröning, an Auschwitz accountant, and John Demjanjuk, a Sobibor guard, were both convicted of accessory to murder in Germany.

Prosecutors in northern Germany asked for a two-year suspended sentence for Furchner, and death camp survivors and victims’ relatives supported this. They told the court that the 97-year-old shouldn’t go to jail.

Furchner’s defense lawyer argued that while thousands were slain in Stutthof, the evidence did not demonstrate that Furchner knew about the systematic massacre, according to a court release.

Many died by fatal injection and in the camp’s gas chamber, according to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Disease and hunger killed others. Jewish, political, criminal, homosexual, and Jehovah’s Witnesses were among them.

Bild called Furchner the secretary of evil,’ a reference to Hannah Arendt’s expression ‘the banality of evil’

Furchner made unexpected final statements this month. She claimed she was sorry, regretted being in Stutthof, and had nothing else to say. During 14 months of court hearings, Furchner stayed mute.

Holocaust survivors and their representatives reportedly pushed Furchner to testify.

Further missed her trial in September 2021 by escaping in a cab. She was detained for five days then released. Due to her age and condition, the court said she wasn’t anticipated to “evade the trial.”

As Nazi war criminals age, Furchner’s trial could be the last in Germany. In 2019, a 95-year-old former Stutthof Nazi guard was found unable to stand trial in a similar case.

Marie Brockling reported from Hong Kong.

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