The 97-year-old woman was convicted in Germany of being an accessory to murder in over 10,500 cases.
The Itzehoe district court in Schleswig-Holstein has found a former secretary at the Stutthof concentration camp near Gdansk guilty of being an accessory to murder in more than 10,500 cases. The criminal court sentenced the 97-year-old Irmgard F. to a two-year suspended sentence on Tuesday. According to the indictment, F. had worked as a shorthand typist for the commander of the Stutthof concentration camp from 1943 to 1945. She was between 18 and 19 years old at the time.
Therefore, the proceedings against her took place before a juvenile chamber. This followed the request of the public prosecutor’s office with its verdict. The two defense attorneys, on the other hand, had demanded an acquittal for their client. They justified this by saying that it could not be proven beyond a doubt that F. knew about the systematic killings in the camp. The 97-year-old had said in her so-called last word that she was “sorry about what had happened and that she was in Stutthof at the time”.
65,000 dead in Stutthof camp
In the Stutthof camp near Danzig, the SS held more than a hundred thousand people under appalling conditions during World War II, many of them Jews. According to historians, about 65,000 died. The camp was notorious for deliberately undersupplying prisoners. Most people died from disease, exhaustion, and abuse. However, there was also a gas chamber and a shot in the neck.
(APA/dpa/AFP)