German courts on Tuesday handed down a final sentence against a 99-year-old former secretary at a Nazi concentration camp, in what could be The latest verdict in Germany on the crimes of the Third Reich.
Irmgard Furchner, accused of complicity in the murders of more than 10,000 people at the Stutthof camp, In present-day Poland, he had appealed against his two-year suspended prison sentence, handed down at the end of December 2022 at the end of a turbulent trial.
The decision of the German Federal Court of Justice reaffirmed the conviction against the woman based on two arguments: one, that crimes against humanity do not expire and the other, following the argument of the German-Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt, that there is no right to obey.
Irmgard Furchner was only a secretary at the Stutthof Nazi concentration camp between 1943 and 1945, but according to the court His work was essential for the Nazi machinery to kill There, in those two years, more than 65 thousand people, the vast majority Jews.
The argument most used by Nazi collaborators until now is that were an insignificant part of the system and that they only obeyed superior orders. This decision of the German Federal Court intends to definitively close the path to this justification and in a certain way forces a citizen to rebel against the injustice of the State.
This final sentence against this woman, who is now 99 years old, to two years of probation It is surely the last one against a Nazi criminal, and wants to be the final legacy of German justice fighting against the horror of Nazism.
The decision was welcomed by the Central Council of Jews in Germany. “For Holocaust survivors, it is extremely important to fight for a belated form of justice,” said its president Josef Schuster.
Almost 80 years after the end of World War II, There are fewer and fewer cases of crimes from the Nazi era that are still being investigated. in Germany.
Con ages between 18 and 19 at the time of the eventsBetween 1943 and 1945, Furchner worked as a typist and secretary to the Stutthof camp commandant, Paul Werner Hoppe.
He was “aware of the murders committed”
“The accused He saw the catastrophic physical condition of the prisonersthe lack of food and clothing, the deplorable hygienic conditions, and he also perceived the smell of burnt human flesh, present daily, escaping through the chimney of the crematorium,” said the judge of the Court, repeating the reasons of the court of first instance.
She was “aware of the murders committed by the camp management” and, through her work as a secretary, “provided direct support to the camp commandant and other SS officers working in the camp management,” he added.
Irmgard Furchner’s defense, for its part, had tried to argue that She was unaware of the systematic murders at Stutthof.
The former typist had been tried before a special juvenile court due to her age at the time of the events.
The symbolic suspended sentence of two years in prison took into account “the hierarchically subordinate position and the possibly reduced capacity for resistance of the accused due to the indoctrination” of the time, the court continued.
Irmgard Furchner He did not speak during the trial nor admit his guilt, But in the last hearings he said that he “regretted everything that had happened” and that he “regretted having been in Stutthof at that time.”