BERLIN, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- A 97-year-old former secretary at the Stutthof Nazi concentration camp in Poland during World War II charged with being an accessory to more than 10,500 murders was given a two-year suspended sentence by a German court on Tuesday.
Irmgard Furchner, who worked as a stenographer for the commander at the camp from 1943 to 1945, was tried in juvenile court because she was under 21 at the time.
Her defense lawyers had asked for their client to be acquitted, claiming that it could not be proven beyond doubt that at the time the young woman had known about the systematic killings in the camp. The trial began in September 2021.
The convict herself said she was sorry for what had happened, but did not admit any guilt of her own. "I regret that I was just in Stutthof at that time. That's all I can say," she said earlier this month.
The woman initially refused to face trial and fled her nursing home in a cab early in the morning before the first session began. Police picked her up hours later on a street in Hamburg, around 10 km away. She subsequently spent five days in custody.
Around 110,000 people from 28 countries were imprisoned at Stutthof and its 39 subcamps between 1939 and 1945. According to the Arolsen Archives in Germany, almost 65,000 did not survive. ■