Irmgard Furchner is a 96-year-old former secretary in a concentration camp, and she is now facing more than 11,000 counts of accessory to murder. Her court date was set for last Thursday, September 30th, and she failed to appear in front of the judge in Germany. Furchner has previously informed various journalists and the judge that she did not want any part of this trial, but she was contacted but the police after the court reported her for missing her trial date. There have been decisions made by the court that she would not have to sit in for an extended trial because of her age, so they were already planning to have much shorter court appearances in this trial. Even under these circumstances, it was assessed that Furchnder is healthy/ "physically fit" enough to stand and appear before the judge, and if she does not do so at her new court date October 19th, she will be facing even further legal troubles. Efraim Zuroff, a head Nazi hunter working in one of their main offices in Jerusalem, told the press that he feels, "if she is healthy enough to flee, she is healthy enough to be incarcerated" (NPR).
Irmgard Furchner is just one example of the many people that the Germans have arrested recently in regards to war crimes during World War 2. Furchner was indicted in February of 2021 after an extensive investigation into the work she was doing as a secretary to the commander at the Stutthof concentration camp which was located in Poland between June 1943 and April of 1945. At this camp in particular, there were more than 60,000 people killed by being given lethal injections of things like gasoline, or by being shot or starved to death. This was mainly targeted of course at Jewish people, but there were also many other groups such as anyone suspected to be involved in “homosexual activity”, political prisoners, accused criminals, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Regarding Furchners' case, “the court said in a statement before the trial that the defendant allegedly ‘aided and abetted those in charge of the camp in the systematic killing of those imprisoned there between June 1943 and April 1945 in her function as a stenographer and typist in the camp commandant's office'’” (NPR). This particular indictment was part of the attempts that German prosecutors are currently making (which has been going on for around ten years) to hold the less prominent figures of the Holocaust accountable for their highly illegal actions. These prosecutors also have to deal with the challenge of working quickly, because these people are all extremely old at this point. Last year there was another conviction of a 93-year-old guard from the same concentration camp who had over 5,000 counts of being an accessory to murder.
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/30/world/europe/irmgard-furchner-germany-nazi.html
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