Irmgard Fürchner was sentenced by the district court in the northern German city of Itzecho to a two-year suspended prison term under juvenile law
The sentence imposed on 97-year-old Irmgard Firchner, the so-called “secretary of evil”, caused an uproar. The 97-year-old was sentenced in Germany to a two-year suspended prison term for complicity in more than 11,000 homicides of the Nazis at the Stathof concentration camp in present-day Poland. Her trial began in September 2021, and the sentence will avoid jail time, which is causing backlash.
Irmgard Fierchner is the first woman to be tried in Germany for Nazi crimes. Irmgard Furchner was sentenced by the district court in the northern German city of Itzecho under juvenile law because she was 18 at the time of the crimes.
During her trial, Firchner claimed that although she worked in the camp’s administrative block she knew nothing about the murders. However, during her trial it was revealed that her husband – who was a member of the SS during World War II – testified in 1954 that he knew that people they had been killed in gas chambers in the concentration camp. She later expressed her remorse.
During the trial, several Stathoff survivors gave chilling accounts of the hell they experienced in the concentration camp. One survivor — Risa Silbert, 93 today — told the Aug. 30 trial that cannibalism was common among starving inmates.
“Stachoff was hell… We had cannibalism in the camp. People were starving, they were cutting up the corpses and they wanted to take out the liver,” he said
In her grim testimony, Silbert, born in Lithuania to a Jewish family, told how her father and brother were murdered by German collaborators in Kaunas in 1941. She was ghettoized with her mother and sister before being sent to Stathof in August of 1944.
The punishment for the deaths of more than 11,000 prisoners is the same as shoplifting, survivors and members of Jewish organizations have bitterly commented.
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With a wealth of experience honed over 4+ years in journalism, I bring a seasoned voice to the world of news. Currently, I work as a freelance writer and editor, always seeking new opportunities to tell compelling stories in the field of world news.
