Nazi death camp 'secretary of evil' dies just 2 years after facing justice for 10,000 murders

A former Nazi death camp secretary who was of aiding more than 10,500 murders has died aged 99.

Irmgard Furchner, , was in and out of court in the years leading up to her death - which according to German news outlet Spiegel happened on January 14, but had not been reported on until now. Furchner joined Stutthof concentration camp as a teenage shorthand typist and worked there from 1943 to 1945 as secretary to the SS commander Paul Werner Hoppe. She was given a two-year suspended jail sentence for her alleged and tried to overturn her conviction in August last year - an appeal that was rejected by the Federal Court of Justice in Leipzig, .

The court's ruling came four months before Furchner's suspended sentence handed down by the Itzehoe District Court was due to end in December 2024. Lawyer Onur Oezata, 40, who represented three Stutthof survivors in court, said: "The secretary was rightly convicted of aiding and abetting murder in several thousand cases. The now legally binding guilty verdict is particularly gratifying for my clients. They never wanted revenge or retribution."

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Furchner was aged under 21 at the time of the alleged crimes, so she was tried in juvenile court. The then 97-year-old was charged with aiding the systematic murder of over 10,000 prisoners at the camp - which was built in September 1939 near what is now known as Sztutow village, Poland.

But the court ruled that Furchner "knew and, through her work as a stenographer in the commandant's office of the Stutthof concentration camp from June 1, 1943, to April 1, 1945, deliberately supported the fact that 10,505 prisoners were cruelly killed".

Stutthof concentration camp accommodated more than 110,000 prisoners until it was liberated by the Red Army in May 1945. Between 63,000 and 65,000 prisoners - of which 28,000 were Jews - were murdered or died of starvation, disease, and after being worked to death in the camp.

Furchner had always maintained that she did not know about the mass killings, despite her job requiring her to report directly to the SS. Furchner's lawyers requested her acquittal and argued that there was no clear evidence that she had any knowledge about the systematic killings at the camp.

During her trial, the court heard that SS men in white medical uniforms would pose as doctors to measure the height of prisoners. But that measurement was actually to be used as a setting for a specially engineered 'neck shot' device. Within a two-hour period, around 30 prisoners were shot in the neck at Stutthof.

Other prisoners were forced into gas chambers before they filled with poisonous Zyklon B gas. They would scream in agony, scratching at their skin until it was raw and even pulling their own hair out.

She remained silent throughout the trial until she spoke her first words on December 6, 2022, and said: "I'm sorry about everything that happened. I regret that I was in Stutthof at the time. I can not say more."

Reacting to her apology, the Holocaust Education Trust said only survivors and relatives of the Nazi regime could "truly judge" her for her "long-delayed 'apology'.". Manfred Goldberg survived eight months at Stutthof as a slave worker, and at the time Furchner was handed her two-year suspended sentence, that meant she did not serve time in prison, he said it was a "mistake" and too lenient.

94-year-old Mr Goldberg said: "This trial serves the purpose of letting the public know that there is no limitation of time for crimes of such cruelty or magnitude. My only disappointment is that a two-year suspended sentence appears to me to be a mistake.

"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?"

He added that he thought it woul dbe "impossible" for her to not know what was going on at the camp. Mr Goldberg said: "The entry gate at Stuffhof was known as the 'Gate of Death', entering was more or less equivalent to death. Everything was documented and progress reports, including how much human hair had been harvested, sent to her office."

It is believed Furchner's case may be one of the last Nazi war crime cases to ever be pushed through the courts. According to a special federal prosecutors' office in Ludwigsburg that investigates Nazi-era war crimes, as of last year there were just three more cases pending with prosecutors or courts across Germany.