At 96, Nazi concentration camp worker fled before testifying at trial

A few hours after testifying in a trial, at the age of 96, an accused of having participated in concentration camps during the Nazism He ran away of the retirement home, in Quickborn, Germany. Hours later, she was captured in a nearby town and the trial was postponed until October 19.

Irmgard Furchner began working on the field in Stutthof, Poland, which had been occupied by the Nazis in 1943. At 96, she was due to start being tried this Thursday in Itzehoe, in northern Germany. But he never reached the public. When they went to pick her up, they did not find her at the retirement home where she was living and an arrest warrant was issued for her. A few hours later, she was found in a neighborhood on the outskirts of Norderstedt.

“The accused has been found and a doctor will determine if she can be detained and the court will decide later whether the arrest warrant is executed or not”Itzehoe court spokeswoman Frederike Milhoffer explained.

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The prosecution accuses the woman, that She served as a stenographer and typist in the office of the commander of the Stutthof concentration camp (near the Polish city of Gdansk), to help camp officials in the systematic murder of over 11,000 prisoners between June 1943 and April 1945.

For this reason, the prosecutor’s office brought the charge against Furchner in February 2021. There have been five years of “extremely complex” investigations that have even required witness statements to be taken in the United States and Israel.

Furchner She served as a stenographer and typist in the office of the commander of the Stuttho concentration campF

Furchner had at the time of the events that she is accused between 18 and 19 years old. For that, she had to be tried by the special juvenile court of Itzeohe. At present, he lives in a retirement home in Hamburg, from where he fled to avoid appearing at the hearing.

This case, moreover, shows the judicial decision to also move forward with the civilian accomplices that Nazism had to carry out its plan of extermination. From 2011 The involvement of officials not directly involved in the Nazi army began to be investigated, and in this scenario, the Furchner trial is entered.

ARDS