Nazi criminal Irmgard Furchner died Monday night at the age of 99, according to reports in German media. Furchner served in her youth as a secretary at the Stutthof concentration and extermination camp and was charged about two years ago with assisting in the murder of more than 11,000 Jewish prisoners at the camp. Furchner was apparently the last war criminal to be convicted of crimes committed during the Holocaust.
She enlisted in the SS during World War II. At the age of 18, she was sent to serve as a secretary to the camp commander, where her responsibilities included stenography, recordings, and transmitting reports to SS headquarters on behalf of the camp. Because of her assistance in the murder of tens of thousands of prisoners in the extermination camp where she served, Furchner was charged at age 96 with collaborating with the Nazis. The late prosecution of Furchner for being responsible for the murder of 11,412 Jews was made possible thanks to a change in German criminal law designed to include those who assisted in the supporting apparatus of extermination in responsibility for the acts of murder in the concentration camps.
During the trial, Holocaust survivors refuted the defense's claims that Furchner did not know what was happening. Josef Salomonovic, who was only six when his father was shot to death at Stutthof, said, "She is guilty even if she just sat in an office and stuck the stamp on my father's death certificate." Holocaust survivor Manfred Goldberg said that "it was impossible not to know what happened in the camp because there were bodies openly transported." After maintaining silence throughout the trial, Furchner finally stated, "I am sorry for what happened. I regret having been in Stutthof in those days. I cannot say more."
In December 2022, the juvenile court – where she was tried because she was only 18 at the time of committing the war crimes – declared that Furchner was found guilty and sentenced her to only two years of suspended prison time due to her advanced age. Furchner was the first German civilian to be charged with complicity in Nazi crimes in the extermination camps, but also apparently the last war criminal to be convicted of crimes during the Holocaust.
