Irmgard Furchner, a former teenage secretary in a Nazi concentration camp in German-occupied Poland, died on January 14 at the age of 99. She was convicted in 2022 for being an accessory to over 10,000 murders. The court in Itzehoe, Germany, where she was tried, confirmed her death, but did not provide further details. This marked a significant shift in German authorities prosecuting lower-level workers as accessories to murders in the camps.
During her time at the Stutthof camp, Furchner served as a secretary and typist, performing typical secretarial duties, but also typing deportation lists and execution orders. She was indicted as an accessory to thousands of murders and five attempted murders at the camp due to her knowledge of the atrocities that occurred there.
After a trial involving testimony from survivors, she received a two-year suspended sentence in December 2022. Survivors expressed disappointment in the brevity of the sentence given the magnitude of the crimes she was found complicit in. Furchner expressed regret in court for her role at the camp.
Born in Danzig, Furchner worked at a bank before being hired at Stutthof. Her husband, an SS officer, may have been met during her time at the camp. Despite appealing her conviction, Germany’s federal court of justice ruled against her in August 2024, stating that she supported the main perpetrators in their actions. Her case highlighted the accountability of those in administrative roles during the Holocaust.
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