German court confirms sentence of 99-year-old former Nazi concentration camp secretary

Germany’s Supreme Court (TS) on Tuesday approved the sentencing of a man who was found to be Irmgard ForchnerFormer secretary of the Stutthof concentration camp (now northern Poland), for complicity 10,505 murders Within the framework of the Nazi regime’s plan to exterminate the Jews.

Furchner, que He is now 99 years old.From June 1943 to April 1945 she served as a concentration camp secretary.

The Itzeho Provincial Court considered this to be proof that the woman, through her work, had aided in the systematic murder of prisoners and sentenced her. Athos Odexelwhich can be commuted to parole.

Fuchsner’s conviction was the first against a civilian accused of involvement in the massacre.

His defence appealed but this has now been rejected by the Supreme Court as it was neither clear nor proven that he knew what was happening at the scene, nor that his work was part of a systematic murder process.

Between 1939 and 1945, 110,000 people were detained in Stutthof, near the present-day Polish city of Gdańsk. Nearly 65,000 people were killed.

The trial attracted attention for a number of reasons, such as the advanced age of the defendants and the fact that it was likely to be one of the last trials related to National Socialist crimes.

There are currently three pending lawsuits, but in two cases the courts have held that the defendants were unable to follow the procedure.

The Fuchsner case has reopened the question of why it took so long for German justice to bring complicit in Nazi crimes to justice.

A 1969 Supreme Court ruling — which preceded a number of Holocaust-related convictions — made it more difficult to prosecute those responsible by requiring them to prove their complicity in specific cases and to show a causal link between their actions and the crime.

This led to several cases being filed, including one against guards involved in the ramp selection at Auschwitz.

In 2011, legal doctrine took a new turn when former Sobibor guard John Demjanjuk was convicted of complicity in 28,000 murders without proving a causal link between his actions and the deaths.

Later, in a review of another conviction, that of Oskar Groening, a guard at Auschwitz, the Supreme Court ruled that it was sufficient that the defendant had become part of the death machine and that he had assisted in its work for a short period of time, thereby committing a large number of murders.

Since then, more than a dozen trials have been held against the elderly, with former victims giving testimony about the crimes of National Socialism.

“It is important for victims to be heard by official institutions,” the law professor at the University of Erlangen said in a statement to the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Christopher Saverinhas published several publications on the judicial handling of Nazi crimes.

Saverin believes the 1969 Supreme Court ruling was a disaster that has long prevented trials from taking place.