99-Year-Old Grandmother Who Worked as a Typist in a Nazi Concentration Camp Found Guilty of Aiding 10,000 Murders

"Last Criminal Lawsuit on Nazi Massacres"

Ingegart Furhiner. Photo by Yonhap News

A 99-year-old grandmother who worked as a typist in a Nazi-era concentration camp has been found guilty.

On the 20th (local time), the German Federal Court dismissed the appeal of Irmgard Furchner (99), who was charged with aiding and abetting murder and attempted murder, and upheld the original sentence of two years probation. The daily S?ddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) reported, "This case is expected to be the last criminal trial related to the National Socialist (Nazi) mass murder."

From June 1943 to April 1945, Furchner worked as a secretary and typist for Commander Paul Werner Hoppe at the Stutthof concentration camp. German prosecutors argued that her duties aided the Nazis' systematic mass murder. She was charged with 10,505 counts of aiding and abetting murder and 5 counts of attempted murder.

Her defense attorneys claimed that the defendant, who was 18 to 20 years old at the time, did not know what was happening in the camp, so intent could not be proven. They also argued that her work was not significantly different from her previous job at a bank before the concentration camp and that she acted "neutrally."

Prosecutors took a different view. Since she managed the commander's correspondence and worked in an office overlooking the camp grounds, they believed it was impossible for her not to know about the mass murder. German prosecutors began investigating Furchner's involvement in the Holocaust against survivors in the US and Israel in 2016 and indicted her in 2021.

On the first day of the trial, the court forcibly brought her to the courtroom after she escaped from a nursing home. In her final statement at the first trial, she said, "I am sorry for everything that has happened so far," and "I regret being at Stutthof at that time."

Since a 2011 ruling that recognized aiding and abetting murder charges against concentration camp guards, Germany has prosecuted many former guards. Furchner is known to be the first office worker to be charged.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.