When the trial was due to begin on September 30, she ran away from the nursing home where she lived, as the German wrote German wave.
But Irmgaard Forchner appeared in court on Tuesday wearing an oversized headscarf and a face mask that hid her face.
A court officer pushed the woman into a courtroom in Itzehoe, near Hamburg, in a wheelchair.
Good security outside and inside the courtroom in Itzehoe, Germany.
Photo: Markus Brandt/AP
There I heard the prosecution read out the indictment against her. Her defender stated that she will not answer any questions in the case for the time being.
The 96-year-old is the first woman in decades to be tried for crimes under the Nazi regime.
Secretary to the Commander of the Special Security Forces
She wrote that she is accused of complicity in the murders of more than 11,000 people between 1943 and 1945 in Stutthof in occupied Poland. Watchman.
Forchner was the secretary to the camp’s SS commander.
From June 1943 to April 1945, she worked in the concentration camp under the command of camp leader Paul Werner Hoppe.
The Public Prosecution indicates that it was responsible for the administration’s correspondence and through it contributed to the operation of the camp.
– Prosecutor Mazzi Wentzen said that her role gave her knowledge of all the incidents and everything that happened in Stutthof, including the mass murder.
A total of 65,000 people died at the Stutthof concentration camp in occupied Poland during the war, Deutsche Welle wrote.
Among the dead were “Jewish prisoners, Polish supporters and Soviet prisoners of war,” the German website said.
Healthy enough to go to prison
The fact that Forchner ran away from the nursing home where she lives in September to avoid court appearances is not true.
“When I escaped, I showed contempt for the survivors as well as for the rule of law,” said Christoph Hubner, vice president of the International Auschwitz Committee.
“If she’s healthy enough to escape, she’s healthy enough to go to prison,” Ephraim Zuroff, an American-Israeli Nazi hunter, said on Twitter.
The 96-year-old was in a wheelchair in court on Tuesday with a policeman behind the wheelchair. In September, she fled the nursing home where she lives to avoid court appearances.
Photo: Christian Charisius / Reuters
Zurov played a prominent role in bringing former war criminals to justice.
The 96-year-old is being tried in juvenile court where she was under 21 when the alleged crimes were committed, according to the NTB.
According to the police, she wears an electronic anklet so that the prosecution knows her whereabouts at all times.
On September 30, she escaped from a nursing home in the town of Quickburn. From there she took a train to Hamburg where she was found and taken into custody by the police.
The second oldest accused
At the same time that Forchner was due to appear in court, the case against a 100-year-old former guard from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp began.
The guard, accused of complicity in the murders of 3,518 people, denied the criminal charge and told the court that he did not know what was going on in the camp.
The camp guard and the secretary are the sheikhs accused of their alleged role in the Nazi camps.
time is running out
76 years after the end of World War II, time is running out to judge people. But the prosecution still has eight cases to consider, according to the unit charged with investigating crimes.
In recent years, many cases have had to be postponed because the accused either died or was not well enough to stand trial.
The latest ruling in a similar case concerned 93-year-old former SS guard Bruno Day, who was sentenced to two years in prison in July this year.
This is the court in Itzehoe near Hamburg where the case is being heard. This is a juvenile court because the woman was 21 when the atrocities occurred.
Photo: Christian Karisios/Reuters
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