Berlin, Dec 20 (EFE).- A 97-year-old woman who was a secretary at a Nazi concentration camp during World War II was on Tuesday convicted by a German court of complicity in the murder of over 10,500 people.
Irmgard Furchner, also found guilty of the attempted murder of another five people, was given a two-year suspended jail sentence as requested by prosecutors at the Itzehoe Provincial Court, some 58 kilometers (36 miles) north of Hamburg.
Furchner worked as the secretary for a Nazi commander at the Stutthof concentration camp, which operated in Nazi-occupied Poland, near Gdansk, from June 1943 to April 1945 when she was aged 18 and 19.
Because she was a teenager at the time of her crimes, Furchner was tried at the juvenile Itzehoe court in a trial that lasted 40 days.
The trial was delayed after the defendant reportedly attempted to flee ahead of the hearing
Fourteen witnesses gave statements, eight of them were survivors of the Stutthof concentration camp.
The prosecutor said that Furchner’s office work assured the smooth running of the camp.
Some 65,000 prisoners died at the Stutthof concentration camp during World War II, including Poles, Jews and prisoners of war.
At least 200 prisoners were killed with Zyklon B in the camp’s gas chamber and inside a closed train carriage, and another 30 were shot in the back of the head in a secret location in the crematorium.EFE
egw/ch/jt
