COM (GERMANY), 5 (DPA / EP)
A 95-year-old woman has been charged with her alleged complicity in more than 10,000 murder cases during her performance as Stutthof’s Nazi concentration camp secretary in the midst of World War II.
If the case goes to trial, the defendant, the name has not transpired although German media sources identify her as Irmgard F., will be submitted to the Juvenile Court of Itzehoe (Schleswig-Holstein state, northern country ), for two reasons: his advanced age and the fact that he was under the age of 21 at the time of the crimes.
In the process, the prosecution will link the woman to the deaths of more than 10,000 prisoners in the concentration camp on the outskirts of Danzig, now Gdansk, in what was then Nazi-occupied Poland.
The woman, a native of Pinneberg Township, worked as a secretary to Field Commander Paul Werner Hoppe during the period 1943-1945.
Russian forces liberated the camp, the last to become clear of Nazi presence, in May 1945, when World War II ended. Investigations into the case have been conducted since 2016 and have received witnesses in the United States and Israel.
According to a report last year by the national public broadcaster ARD, the woman has been cited as a witness on several occasions to provide evidence that all correspondence with the SS headquarters was through her desk. The woman has admitted to taking notes from Hoppe every day, but said she knew nothing about the massacre that was happening a few meters from her office.
In July, a juvenile court in Hamburg convicted a 93-year-old man at the time for his role as a guard at Stutthof. The court handed down a two-year suspended sentence for being complicit in murder.