2024-08-02 14:42:35
A former secretary from the Stutthof concentration camp has been found guilty of aiding and abetting murder in more than 10,000 cases. The Federal Court of Justice will decide whether this verdict stands.
How far does the guilt extend of those who served in the Nazi concentration camps and enabled systematic murder there? The Federal Court of Justice in Leipzig discussed this question on Wednesday. The 5th Criminal Senate must decide whether a civilian typist in a concentration camp could have assisted in Nazi mass murder in more than 10,000 cases. The verdict is to be announced on August 20. The case is considered to be probably the last major trial to come to terms with Nazi mass murder.
In December 2022, the Itzehoe Regional Court in Schleswig-Holstein sentenced the former concentration camp secretary Irmgard F. to a youth sentence of two years on probation for aiding and abetting murder in 10,505 cases and five cases of aiding and abetting attempted murder. As a young woman, the now 99-year-old worked as a secretary in the office of the commandant of the Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig between June 1943 and April 1945. Her defense attorneys had appealed against the conviction, which was now being heard in Leipzig.
The woman’s lawyers, Wolf Molkentin and Niklas Weber, felt that the verdict from Itzehoe left important legal questions unanswered. Among other things, they raised the question of whether the defendant, as a young typist, had really assisted in the actions of the camp commandant and other main perpetrators in the concentration camp. Her work was not significantly different from her previous duties in a bank and her later job in a clinic. She had performed “neutral actions.”
The lawyers also questioned whether she could be proven to have acted intentionally. “Did she really become aware of what happened in the camp?” asked Molkentin. The Itzehoe Regional Court assumed that Irmgard F. provided “psychological support” through her work. Most of the correspondence in the concentration camp passed through her desk, she served the camp commander loyally and devotedly, encouraging him in his actions. Lawyer Molkentin, on the other hand, pointed to the strict hierarchies in the camp administration. “There was no need for psychological support from below,” he said.
Molkentin requested an acquittal for Irmgard F. or at least a referral of the case back to the regional court for a new hearing. The 99-year-old had not come to Leipzig – she did not have to be present either.
The Federal Prosecutor General had requested the oral hearing in Leipzig. The case may offer the Federal Court of Justice the last opportunity to clarify important questions, said the representative. He explained that the guilty verdict by the Itzehoe Regional Court was justified. Irmgard F. was available for the murders in the Stutthof concentration camp because she was available for service. He pleaded for the defendants’ appeal to be rejected. This was also demanded by the lawyers for the remaining 23 joint plaintiffs in the case.
At the end of the hearing, the lawyer of a now 96-year-old co-plaintiff read out a statement from the man, who lives in Israel. The Stutthof concentration camp was a monstrous extermination camp during the time he was imprisoned there, it said. “Those who claim that they only followed instructions are, in my opinion, accomplices of the extermination machine.” He hoped that the defendant would admit a mistake and express regret.