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Irmgard Furchner: Nazi typist guilty of complicity in 10,500 murders

Aformer secretary who worked for the commander of a Nazi concentration camp has been convicted of complicity in the murders of more than 10,505 people.

Irmgard Furchner, 97, was taken on as a teenaged typist at Stutthof and worked there from 1943 to 1945.

Furchner, one of the few women to be tried for Nazi crimes in decades, was given a two-year suspended jail term.

Although she was a civilian worker, the judge agreed she was fully aware of what was going on at the camp.

Some 65,000 people are thought to have died in horrendous conditions at Stutthof, including Jewish prisoners, non-Jewish Poles and captured Soviet soldiers. As Furchner was only 18 or 19 at the time, she was tried in a special juvenile court.

At Stutthof, located near the modern-day Polish city of Gdansk, a variety of methods was used to murder detainees and thousands died in gas chambers there from June 1944.

The court at Itzehoe in northern Germany heard from survivors of the camp, some of whom have died during the trial.

When the trial began in September 2021, Irmgard Furchner went on the run from her retirement home and was eventually found by police on a street in Hamburg.

Stutthof commandant PaulWerner Hoppe was jailed in 1955 for being an accessory to murder and he was released five years later.

A series of prosecutions have taken place in Germany since 2011, after the conviction of former Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk set the precedent that being a guard was sufficient evidence to prove complicity.

That ruling also meant that civilian worker Furchner could stand trial, as she worked directly to the camp commander, dealing with correspondence surrounding Stutthof detainees.

It took 40 days for her to break her silence in the trial, when she told the court “I’m sorry about everything that happened”. “I regret that I was in Stutthof at the time - that’s all I can say,” she said.

Her defence lawyers argued she should be acquitted because of doubts surrounding what she knew, as she was one of several typists in Hoppe’s office.

Historian Stefan Hördler played a key role in the trial, accompanying two judges on a visit to the site of the camp. It became clear from the visit that Furchner was able to see some of the worst conditions at the camp from the commandant’s office.

The historian told the trial that 27 transports carrying 48,000 people arrived at Stutthof between June and October 1944, after the Nazis decided to expand the camp and speed up mass murder with the use of Zyklon B gas.

Mr Hördler described Hoppe’s office as the “nerve centre” for everything that went on at Stutthof.

Camp survivor Josef Salomonovic, who travelled to the court to give evidence at the trial, was only six when his father was shot dead at Stutthof in September 1944.

“She’s indirectly guilty,” he told reporters at the court last December, “even if she just sat in the office and put her stamp on my father’s death certificate.”

Another survivor, Manfred Goldberg, said his only

The court ordered that pictures of Irmgard Furchner from the trial should be blurred

The former president at Mar-a-Lago on the night he announced he’ll run again.

disappointment was that the twoyear suspended sentence “appears to be a mistake”.

“No-one in their right mind would send a 97 year old to prison, but the sentence should reflect the severity of the crimes,” he said.

“If a shoplifter is sentenced to two years, how can it be that someone convicted for complicity in 10,000 murders is given the same sentence?”

Furchner’s trial could be the last to take place in Germany into Naziera crimes, although a few cases are still being investigated.

Two other cases have gone to court in recent years for Nazi crimes committed at Stutthof.

Last year a former camp guard was declared unfit for trial even though the court said there was a “high degree of probability” he was guilty of complicity.

January 6 committee: What’s next for Trump legally and politically

Donald Trump should be charged with crimes related to the assault on the US Capitol, according to the congressional committee investigating the 6 January, 2021 attack.

The committee claimed the former president instigated the attack by his supporters and provided “aid and comfort” to the rioters in violation of multiple federal laws. “None of the events of January 6 would have happened without him,” the summary of its final report says.

Members say there’s evidence to pursue the prosecution of Mr Trump on four charges:

The vote provided a dramatic finale to an 18-month inquiry into the chaotic last days of Mr Trump’s presidency - but the implications for him will be mostly political, not legal.

If Mr Trump were convicted of the crimes the committee has accused him of committing, he could face hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, up to 20 years in prison and be prohibited from running for future political office. The committee’s vote, however, is largely symbolic.

Congress does not have the ability to charge Mr Trump with any of the listed federal crimes. That power lies solely in the hands of the US Justice Department, which is part of President Joe Biden’s administration.

With its vote, the congressional committee members have, in effect, recommended the Justice Department act. They have laid out the case - the means, the motive and the opportunity - as they see it. And, perhaps most importantly, they have provided a trove of the supporting evidence gathered over nearly two years of interviews, subpoenas, document reviews and legal battles.

What the Justice Department does with all this, however, is entirely out of the committee’s control.

Trump’s legal woes

While the January 6 committee’s recommendations may have little legal weight, there are plenty of indications that the Justice Department is already well into the kind of investigation of possible criminal conduct by the former president that the committee desires.

A grand jury convened by federal attorneys has already issued subpoenas to dozens of Mr Trump’s administration and campaign officials and requested many of the same Trump administration documents reviewed by the congressional committee.

Last month, US Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel, Jack Smith, to handle all aspects of the inquiry into the former president. He cited Mr Trump’s announcement of his 2024 presidential bid, and the possibility that Mr Trump could face off against Mr Biden in the general election, as grounds for separating the investigation from the Justice Department’s day-to-day operations.

Since then, Mr Smith’s office has issued its own subpoenas to officials in seven states who had been contacted by Mr Trump or his advisers during their attempts to dispute the 2020 presidential election results. The independent council investigation appears to be wasting little time picking up where career Justice Department lawyers left off.

The Capitol attack is not Mr Trump’s only source of legal concern, either. Mr Smith is also investigating the former president’s handling of classified material at his Mar-a-Lago estate after he left office. A Georgia district attorney continues to dig into whether Mr Trump’s contact with state officials violated Georgia election law. And there are a host of civil cases too.

Political fallout

Mr Trump has long attempted to paint the entirety of the criminal and civil investigations and lawsuits directed at him as part of a partisan “witch hunt” whose ultimate goal is to thwart his return to political power.

The nature of the congressional committee’s criminal referral - voted on by seven Democrats and two vehemently anti-Trump Republicans - will do little to counter these claims, and may in fact be cited by Mr Trump as further evidence of the partisan nature of the allegations if and when they turn into actual criminal charges.

The referrals, however, will generate days of negative coverage for Mr Trump, as newspaper and television headlines recount the nature of the recommended charges and remind Americans of the violence of 6 January and Mr Trump’s monthslong efforts to challenge his election defeat.

Source: BBC