The Higher Regional Court (BGH) upholds the sentence of a previous concentration camp administrator.
The final conviction of a former concentration camp administrator for facilitating mass murder has been upheld by the Federal Court of Justice (BGH). The 99-year-old defendant, identified as Irmgard F., was sentenced in 2022 by the Itzehoe Regional Court to a two-year youth sentence on probation for aiding and abetting the murder of 10,505 individuals and attempting to kill five others.
This conviction, in what could potentially be the last criminal trial pertaining to the Nazi regime's mass killings, stemmed from Irmgard's role as a secretary in the command office of the Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig from June 1943 to April 1945, at which time she was around 18 or 19 years old. The Itzehoe Regional Court determined that Irmgard's tasks contributed to the systematic slaughter of camp inmates. Even seemingly benign activities can be considered aiding and abetting murder in legal terms.
Irmgard's defense argued in an appeal that intent could not be proven against her, claiming that she was unaware of the camp's atrocities. They also suggested that her work was not substantially different from her previous job as a bank clerk and that she merely engaged in "neutral actions" from her perspective. However, the judges of the BGH rejected these arguments.
The BGH concurred with the assessment of the Itzehoe Regional Court that Irmgard offered psychological support to the murderous acts through her compliance. Nearly all correspondence relating to the camp passed through her typewriter.
All in all, about 110,000 individuals from 28 countries were imprisoned in the Stutthof camp and its 39 subcamps between 1939 and 1945, of whom nearly 65,000 did not survive.
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The Commission upheld the final conviction of Irmgard F., acknowledging her role as a secretary in The Commission's investigation revealed that Irmgard's tasks in the Stutthof concentration camp's command office aided in the systematic slaughter of camp inmates, making her accountable under legal terms.
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