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Former Nazi Camp Secretary Caught After Being Charged With 11,000 Offences

Former Nazi Camp Secretary Caught After Being Charged With 11,000 Offences

The 96-year-old went on the run ahead of her trial when she escaped from her nursing home.

Stewart Perrie

Stewart Perrie

An elderly former Nazi concentration camp secretary has been apprehended after going on the run just before she was due to stand trial.

The 96-year-old has been charged with more than 11,000 offences related to being an accessory to murder at a camp during World War II.

Irmgard Furchner has also been accused of being complicit in 18 cases of attempted murder when she worked at the Stutthof camp near Gdansk in Nazi-occupied Poland between 1943-45.

Her trial was due to start yesterday (September 30), however the elderly woman left the care home she has been living in and went to an underground station via a taxi.

She was missing for several hours and the Itzehoe district court had to issue an arrest warrant for her. Furchner was eventually taken into custody.

Stutthof camp.
Alamy

Prosecutors say the woman started working at the concentration camp when she was just 18 years old.

They also allege Furchner signed deportation orders to Auschwitz and 'assisted those responsible at the camp in the systematic killing of Jewish prisoners, Polish partisans and Soviet Russian prisoners of war'.

Holocaust survivors were expected to attend Furchner's trial, however they've been horrified to learn she was able to escape.

Christoph Heubner, the executive president of the International Auschwitz Committee, said in a statement: "It shows an incredible contempt for the rule of law and for the survivors, too.

"[Authorities] should have reckoned with an escape and put the care home under guard and brought the accused to the trial."

Stutthof camp.
Alamy

Furchner has given witness testimony at other Holocaust trials and previously claimed she had no knowledge of what took place inside the concentration camps.

However, a ruling made in Germany 10 years ago set a precedent that allows for anyone involved in the Nazi camps to face justice.

That landmark decision in 2011 ruled that German prosecutors would be permitted to pursue people involved in the death camps if they were 'cogs in the machine'.

At least 70 people who worked at the Stutthof camp have been found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. More than a dozen have been sentenced to death for their charges.

Stutthof camp was the first concentration camp to be set up outside of Germany and saw as many as 65,000 inmates die.

German prosecutors currently have 10 active cases of people who worked in various roles at different concentration camps during Nazi occupation.

Furchner's trial will go ahead later this month.

Featured Image Credit: Alamy

Topics: News