The 97-year-old woman who served as the SS commander of the Stutthof concentration camp’s secretary was demanded to be found guilty of accessory to murder and handed a two-year suspended sentence by German prosecutors on Tuesday.
At the Itzehoe state court in northern Germany, Irmgard Furchner has been on trial for more than a year.
According to the German news agency DPA, prosecutor Maxi Wantzen stated during closing arguments that “these procedures are of great historical significance.”
Furchner is charged with being a part of the machinery that made the Stutthof concentration camp run efficiently during World War II.
In her role as a stenographer and typist in the camp commandant’s office, she is accused of having “aided and abetted those in charge of the camp in the methodical murdering of people imprisoned there between June 1943 and April 1945.”
Wantzen stated on Tuesday that from her office, the defendant would have had a clear view of many areas of the camp, including a location where new prisoners were received.
The prosecutor continued, “She must have also been able to see and smell smoke from the burning of remains at the crematorium.”
Wantzen argued that it was not essential for the defendant to have entered the gated camp herself for her to know about the mass killings.
In the trial, Furchner hasn’t reacted to the accusations made against her.
The German legal system does not use formal pleas.
At the war’s end, tens of thousands of people perished at Stutthof and its satellite camps or on so-called death marches.
Because Furchner was under 21 when the alleged offenses allegedly occurred, she is being tried in juvenile court.
On November 29, the closing arguments will proceed.
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