German court rejects appeal of 99-year-old ex-Nazi camp secretary

By Anadolu staff

BERLIN (AA) – A German court on Tuesday rejected an appeal by a 99-year-old woman who was given a two-year suspended sentence for her complicity in the killings of more than 10,000 people at a Nazi camp.

The Federal Court of Justice (BGH) has upheld a lower court ruling that Irmgard Furchner was complicit in the systematic killing of prisoners, by helping those in charge of the concentration camp, and underlined that supporting activities could also be considered “aiding and abetting murder”.

Furchner was 18 years old when she worked as a stenographer and typist for the Nazi commander of the Stutthof concentration camp near Gdansk, in northwestern Poland.

Her lawyers had claimed that she did not really know what was going on in the camp, and her work as a typist was not significantly different from her previous job in a bank.

At least 60,000 people, mostly Jews from across Germany, were believed to have been killed at the Nazi concentration camp between 1940 and 1945.

The trial of Furchner, who has been dubbed “the secretary of evil,” drew international media attention two years ago, as it was considered to be one of the last trials of Nazis involved in the Holocaust during World War II.