Who is Irmgard Furchner? Former Nazi camp secretary sentenced over involvement in over 10000 concentration camp murders

On Tuesday, December 20, a 97-year-old German woman, identified as Irmgard Furchner, was found guilty of aiding and abetting the murders of over 10,500 people at a Nazi concentration camp in Poland. She was given a two-year suspended jail sentence for her involvement in the killings that happened at the Stutthof concentration camp.

According to the Itzehoe court's criminal chamber, Furchner's occupation was that of a civilian typist in the commandant's office in the camp that was located near the town of Gdańsk.

Irmgard Furchner started working at the concentration camp in June 1943 when she was 18 years old and remained a part of the camp until April 1945. She was a part of what historian Stefan Hördler called the "nerve center" of the entire camp.

In what might have been the last Nazi trial, Furchner was convicted of assisting those in charge of the camp with the systematic killing of thousands of inmates. The 97-year-old had worked directly for the commander of the Stutthof camp, Paul-Werner Hoppe, who was imprisoned in 1955 for being an accessory to murder.

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Irmgard Furchner "regrets" that she was at Stutthof concentration camp, Holocaust survivors call her "indirectly guilty"

The trial, which started last September, finally came to a conclusion on Tuesday when Irmgard Furchner was found guilty of aiding the mass genocide that took place at the Nazi concentration camps.

Last September, the nonagenarian disappeared from her retirement home and went on the run from the law. She was later apprehended by police in Hamburg and was in custody for five days. Her lawyers have claimed that Furchner, who was a secretary at the camp, was not personally guilty of any crime.

Her trial, which continued for over forty days, took place at a juvenile court as Furchner was 18 when she joined the concentration camp. Witnesses included survivors of the Nazi regime and historian Stefan Hördler who traveled down to the Stutthof site with the judges.

The BBC reported that some of the worst conditions of the camp were visible from the commander's office, where Irmgard Furchner was stationed.

Josef Salomonovic, whose father was shot and killed at the Stutthof camp, told BBC News that the Nazi secretary was "indirectly guilty" of the horrendous crimes.

"Even if she just sat in the office and put her stamp on my father's death certificate."

Another survivor, Manfred Goldberg, expressed his opinion on Irmgard Furchner's suspended jail sentence and told journalists:

"No one in their right mind would send a 97-year-old to prison, but the sentence should reflect the severity of the crimes...If a shoplifter is sentenced to two years, how can it be that someone convicted for complicity in 10,000 murders is given the same sentence?"

The only thing left for the 97-year-old to do at the trial was to apologize for her involvement. Furchner addressed the jury and said:

"I am sorry for everything that happened, and I regret that I was in Stutthof at the time. That's all I can say."

Her suspended jail sentence means that Irmgard Furchner will not serve jail time. She is one of the few women who were tried for their involvement in the apparatus that aided in the Nazi genocide.