Stutthof concentration camp in Sztutowo, Poland (Wikipedia)
A former nazi concentration camp worker who is now 95 years old has been indicted in Germany on 10,000 counts of murder. The woman identified as Irmgard F. once worked as a secretary at the Stutthof concentration camp in Sztutowo, Poland.
Under German law people accused of crimes committed before the age of 21 have a right to keep their identities a secret. Since the woman was only 18 at the time that she first started working at the camp this applies to her even today. This also means that she can only be tried as a juvenile.
And yet she is nearing 100 years of age. It has been almost 76 years since World War II ended and there are few people left in the world who are guilty of complicity in the Holocaust. Anyone brought to justice today for it would have to be at least 90 years old. Fortunately, people are not being let off for their crimes just because of old age.
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According to Jewish Virtual Library, Stutthof first opened in 1939 and remained in operation until its liberation by the Russian army on May 9th 1945. That was the day of the German surrender which ended World War II in Europe.
Records show that more than 85,000 people were slaughtered there. It was divided into 40 different sub camps. Located near the Polish port city of Gdansk, the camp was used primarily to hold Polish people who the Germans considered undesirable. These were mainly the highly educated and political types of people who would have given the greatest resistance to the German occupation. The people sent there did not even need to commit any actual acts of resistance.
According to Deutsche Welle prosecutors accused the woman of, “having assisted those responsible at the camp in the systematic killing of Jewish prisoners, Polish partisans and Soviet Russian prisoners of war.” She had been under investigation since 2016.
Peter Mueller-Rakow, spokesman for the prosecutors, said that in the trial they will, “focus on the suspect who was in the camp as a secretary, and her concrete responsibility for the functioning of the camp.”
