German court rejects appeal by ex-Nazi secretary over role in 10,500 murders

Irmgard Furchner, 99, was found guilty in 2022 of being an accessory to killings at Stutthof concentration camp

Associated Press in Berlin
Tue 20 Aug 2024 04.57 EDT

A German court has rejected an appeal by a 99-year-old woman who was convicted of being an accessory to more than 10,500 murders during her role as a secretary to the SS commander of the Nazis’ Stutthof concentration camp during the second world war.

The federal court of justice upheld the conviction of Irmgard Furchner, who was given a two-year suspended sentence in December 2022 by a state court in Itzehoe, northern Germany.

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The Furchner case is one of several in recent years that built on a precedent established in 2011 with the conviction of the former Ohio autoworker John Demjanjuk as an accessory to murder on allegations that he served as a guard at the Sobibor death camp. Demjanjuk, who denied the allegations, died before his appeal could be heard.

German courts previously required prosecutors to justify charges by presenting evidence of a former guard’s participation in a specific killing, often a near-impossible task.

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