Irmgard Furchner, a 96 year old care home resident in Quickborn, Pinneberg, Germany, is reported to have gone on the run today after fleeing from her care home in a taxi to Hamburg, just as her trial was to begin.
In February this year, the former wartime typist at the Stutthof camp, was charged for aiding and abetting mass murder in relation to "more than 10,000 cases".
Ms Furchner was recaptured today on a street in Hamburg.
The Jewish Nazi hunter, Efraim Zuroff tweeted that if she was healthy enough to flee, then she was healthy enough to go to jail.
To me, this story has a rather all too familiar, smelly Jewish pong to it ...
BBC : Nazi Stutthof camp secretary flees as German trial starts
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-58747082
30 September 2021
A former secretary at a Nazi concentration camp has been captured after trying to flee before her trial in northern Germany.
Irmgard Furchner, 96, was due to stand trial for complicity in 11,000 murders, but she failed to turn up and the judge issued a warrant for her arrest.
The defendant was detained by police hours after disappearing from a nursing home in the town of Quickborn.
She had fled to Hamburg where she was picked up on a local street.
Irmgard Furchner had been due to appear at a special juvenile court in Itzehoe, an hour's drive north of Hamburg.
Instead she left the retirement home between 06:00 and 07:20 local time (05:00 and 06:20 BST), apparently heading for an underground station. "She took a taxi," said court spokeswoman Frederike Milhoffer.
The court spokeswoman said later that the defendant would now be brought before the court, set up in the hall of a logistics company in Itzehoe because the town courtroom is not big enough to handle the media interest.
Judge Dominik Gross had earlier postponed the case until 19 October. Because of the woman's age, the court is expected to sit for no more than two hours a day. A doctor was due to examine her to decide whether she should remain in custody.
A group representing Nazi survivors and relatives of the dead expressed outrage that she had been able to escape. "It shows incredible contempt for the rule of law and survivors," said the International Auschwitz Committee.
The case is seen as unprecedented as Irmgard Furchner was a civilian worker at Stutthof.
Holocaust guard found unfit to stand trial at 96
She had worked as a typist in the office of Stutthof camp commandant Paul-Werner Hoppe, near the modern-day Polish city of Gdansk, which was then occupied by Nazi Germany and known as Danzig.
For two years before the end of the war in 1945, she was said to have known key details of what went on at the concentration camp.
During Hoppe's 1954 trial she revealed how he had dictated messages to her but claimed she knew nothing of the Nazi murders at Stutthof.
Some 100,000 people were held at Stutthof, which was notorious for atrocious conditions and 65,000 are estimated to have died.
Stutthof had gas chambers, and people were killed at the camp by gassing, shooting and lethal injection as well as death and starvation. More lost their lives on death marches from the camp as World War Two neared its end.
Those killed at Stutthof include many Jews as well as non-Jewish Poles and captured Soviet soldiers.
Thursday's case marks one of the last ever Nazi trials, largely because few defendants are still alive. The trial is taking place in a juvenile court as the defendant was under the adult age at the time.
In March, a former Stutthof camp guard was declared unfit to stand trial, while last year another camp guard, Bruno Dey, was found guilty of complicity in the murder of more than 5,000 prisoners. He was given a suspended jail term.
BBC : Stutthof camp: Woman, 95, accused of aiding Nazi mass murder
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-55953967
5 February 2021
A 95-year-old woman who worked for the commandant of a Nazi concentration camp has been charged in north Germany with aiding and abetting mass murder.
The woman, named in media as Irmgard F and who lives in a care home in Pinneberg near Hamburg, is charged in relation to "more than 10,000 cases".
She was secretary to the SS commandant of Stutthof, a brutal camp near modern-day Gdansk, where about 65,000 prisoners died during World War Two.
It is unclear if she will face trial.
Her role is still being studied.
Stutthof was established in 1939 and guards began using gas chambers there in June 1944. Soviet troops liberated it in May 1945, as the war was ending.
About 100,000 inmates were kept at Stutthof in atrocious conditions - many died of disease and starvation, some were gassed and others were given lethal injections.
Many of the victims were Jews; there were also non-Jewish Poles and captured Soviet soldiers.
A court for juveniles in Schleswig-Holstein now has to decide whether the ex-secretary's case should go to trial. At the time of the crimes she was under 21, so counted as a minor.
She has claimed that she never knew people were being gassed in the camp.
It is an unusual case, as very few women have ever been tried for Nazi camp atrocities, and most cases have focused on camp guards, not secretaries, the BBC's Damien McGuinness reports from Berlin.
Prosecutors have questioned Irmgard F and began investigating her SS record in 2016. One prosecutor also interviewed Stutthof survivors now living in Israel, German public broadcaster ARD reported.
She is accused of "aiding and abetting murder in more than 10,000 cases", as well as complicity in attempted murder.
The indictment says she "assisted those responsible at the camp in the systematic killing of Jewish prisoners, Polish partisans and Soviet Russian prisoners of war, in her function as a stenographer and secretary to the camp commandant" between June 1943 and April 1945.
Ex-commandant Paul Werner Hoppe was given a nine-year jail term in Bochum in 1957.
Last year Bruno Dey, 93, a former Stutthof guard, got a two-year suspended prison sentence in Hamburg for complicity in mass murder. At his trial he apologised to Holocaust victims.
Times of Israel : Nazi death camp worker, 96, ‘on the run’ after not showing up in court
https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/na ... -in-court/
Court officials say Irmgard Furchner is missing after she left home in a taxi. She is charged with complicity in nearly 10,000 murders
By Michael Daventry
September 30, 2021, 10:26 am
A 96-year-old woman charged with complicity in thousands of murders at a Nazi death camp has gone on the run as her trial begins, a German court has heard.
Irmgard Furchner, who now lives in an elderly persons’ care home near Hamburg, worked as a stenographer at the Stutthof camp near Danzig, now the Polish city of Gdansk.
She is accused assisting with the systematic killing of Jewish prisoners, as well as Polish partisans and Soviet Russian prisoners of war.
Her file contains the cases of more than 10,000 people and was due to be heard in a juvenile court because she was 18 years old at the time.
She worked at the camp between June 1943 and April 1945.
Twitter :
The secretary of the commandant of Stutthof conc. camp was supposed to face charges today for assisting in the murder of 11,000 inmates. Instead she fled. Healthy enough to flee, healthy enough to go to jail!!
— Efraim Zuroff (@EZuroff) September 30, 2021
The Holocaust historian and Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff said the incident demonstrated, contrary to claims she was too old to stand trial, that she was “healthy enough to flee, healthy enough to go to jail”.
Presiding judge Dominik Gross said he had issued an arrest warrant for Furchner after she failed to appear in court as expected on Thursday morning.
A spokesperson for the court said the defendant had left her home that morning and her whereabouts were unknown.
Frederike Milhoffer told Germany’s DPA agency she had taken a taxi towards a railway station in Norderstedt on the outskirts of Hamburg.
An army of journalists and observers had gathered to watch the start of the proceedings, one of a series of cases against elderly Nazi war crime suspects pursued by German prosecutors.
Cases like this, where vengeful Jews conspire to prosecute a 96 year old woman who was simply a typist at Stutthof, for alleged complicity in "mass murder" in a fictional gas chamber, show the world the true nature of Talmudic revenge.
The replies to the Tweet from the odious Efraim Zuroff show the utter disgust with which ordinary folk react to such spiteful travesties and show that the tide is indeed turning ...
https://twitter.com/EZuroff/status/1443523799257862147
This reply in particular, sums it up very succinctly :
Niklas Patric
@usernameskit2
https://twitter.com/usernameskit2/statu ... 6515990535
2h
So the 102 year old cleaning lady at the camp comes next?
.
