97-year-old Nazi camp secretary appeals conviction in Germany

Dec. 28 (UPI) -- A 97-year-old German woman is appealing her conviction of being an accessory to more than 10,000 murders when she was a secretary to the commander of the Nazis' Stutthof concentration camp during World War II.

Irmgard Furchner was given a two-year suspended sentence by the Itzehoe state court for being an accessory to murder in 10,505 cases and an accessory to attempted murder in five cases.

Furchner filed an appeal to the Federal Court of Justice. It wasn't clear when the court will consider the case.

Last week, Furchner was convicted by a Berlin Court. She had served as a civilian typist in the commandant's office at the Stutthof concentration camp near Nazi-occupied Gdansk, Poland, from 1943 to 1945, when many Jews were systematically killed.

More than 100,000 were housed at the Stutthof camp during World War II with 65,000 of them eventually dying there. The camp was well known for its deliberate lack of care and mistreatment of prisoners along with its gas chambers and neck-shooting facilities.

Furchner's direct boss, camp commander Paul-Werner Hoppe, was imprisoned in 1955 for being an accessory to murder, though he was released five years later.

"I am sorry for everything that happened, and I regret that I was in Stutthof at the time," Furchner told the court. "That's all I can say."

Furchner's defense attorneys argued that there was no evidence showing that she knew about the systematic killing at the concentration camp and prosecutors failed to show criminal liability.

Prosecutors and some survivors noted that she directly aided in activities that led to the deaths and should be punished.

"No one in their right mind would send a 97-year-old to prison, but the sentence should reflect the severity of the crimes," said Stutthof survivor Manfred Goldberg 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?"