97-year-old Nazi secretary appeals German murder convictions

Irmgard Furchner
(Image credit: CHRISTIAN CHARISIUS/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

Irmgard Furchner, a 97-year-old former secretary at Stutthof Nazi concentration camp, has appealed her two-year suspended sentence, just days after she was convicted of being an accessory to the murder of more than 10,000 camp inmates by a German state court, CBS News reported on Wednesday.

Furchner, who served as a stenographer in the camp Commandant Paul Werner Hoppe's office, had been accused of aiding and abetting the deaths of thousands of people between June 1943 and April 1945, and was found guilty on December 20, more than a year after her trial first began. She had initially fled her nursing home before a 2021 court date, and was apprehended only after a judge issued a warrant for her arrest.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Rafi Schwartz, The Week US

Rafi Schwartz has worked as a politics writer at The Week since 2022, where he covers elections, Congress and the White House. He was previously a contributing writer with Mic focusing largely on politics, a senior writer with Splinter News, a staff writer for Fusion's news lab, and the managing editor of Heeb Magazine, a Jewish life and culture publication. Rafi's work has appeared in Rolling Stone, GOOD and The Forward, among others.