A 97-year-old former secretary at a Nazi SS death camp who was given a two-year suspended jail sentence for aiding the murder of 10,505 victims has appealed her conviction.
Irmgard Furchner, 97 – dubbed the ‘secretary of evil’ – was sentenced at the final hearing of the 14-month-long trial at the Itzehoe Regional Court on Tuesday, 20th December.
But just days after the verdict, she has appealed her conviction at Germany’s supreme criminal court, the Federal Court of Justice (BGH).
Both Furchner’s defence lawyers and a lawyer for a co-plaintiff reportedly appealed the verdict on Wednesday, 28th December.
Following the appeal, a spokesperson from the Itzehoe Regional Court said: “The judgment is therefore not final.”
The spokesperson stated that the appeal could only concern an examination of whether the sentence had been based on a violation of the law and added that no new evidence would be presented.
Head of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, Efraim Zuroff said: “This criminal was lucky not to receive a prison sentence given the role she played in the deaths of more than 10,000 innocent victims.”
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre is a Jewish human rights organisation established in 1977 that specialises in hunting down World War II Nazi war criminals.
Furchner’s conviction reportedly relied on a German legal precedent established over a decade that allows people to be prosecuted as an accessory to the murders in Nazi death camps regardless of whether they participated in specific killings.
She was tried in juvenile court because she was under 21 at the time of the alleged crimes.
Furchner worked as secretary to SS commander Paul Werner Hoppe of Nazi Germany’s Stutthof concentration camp.
She was charged with aiding the systematic murder of over 10,000 prisoners at the camp, where she worked from June 1943 to April 1945.
The camp was built in September 1939 near what is now Sztutow village, in what was then occupied Poland.
Nazi SS Typist Gets Two-Year Jail Sentence
A 97-year-old former secretary at a Nazi SS death camp has been given a two-year suspended jail sentence for her part in the murder of more than 11,000 victims.
It accommodated more than 110,000 prisoners until it was liberated by the Red Army in May 1945.
Between 63,000 and 65,000 prisoners – of which 28,000 were Jews – were murdered or died of starvation, disease, and after being worked to death in the camp.
Since the beginning of the trial, Furchner claimed she was not aware of the mass killings, despite her job as secretary of the camp’s commander, meaning that she reported directly to the SS.
Prosecutors had earlier requested that she be sentenced to just two years probation if found guilty.
Furchner’s lawyers requested her acquittal and argued that there was no clear evidence that she had any knowledge about the systematic killings at the camp.
Furchner had meanwhile remained virtually silent since the beginning of the trial on Thursday, 30th September, 2021.
She spoke her first words on Tuesday, 6th December, and said: “I’m sorry about everything that happened. I regret that I was in Stutthof at the time. I can not say more.”
Zuroff said: “Given her claim that she had no knowledge of the murders being committed in the camp, her regret was far from convincing.”
Furchner made headlines last year in September after she left her retirement home in Quickborn, Hamburg, jumped into a taxi and went on the run.
But the police arrested her just hours later and held her in custody for five days. It was not revealed where she had gone.
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Story By: Georgina Jadikovska, Sub-Editor: Marija Stojkoska, Agency: Newsflash
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