An elderly nursing home resident is to appear before a juvenile court in Germany for her alleged role in the systematic murder of more than 11,400 inmates at a Polish concentration camp.
Irmgard Furchner, 96, was 18 when she worked as a secretary for the commander of Stutthof concentration camp between June 1943 and April 1945.
She is currently a resident at a nursing home in Quickborn, near the northern port city of Hamburg.
Furchner is due to stand trial at the Itzehoe Regional Court later this year. As has happened in the trials of some other former Nazi camp staff, Furchner will appear before a juvenile court because she was under 21 at the time of her alleged crimes so counted as a minor.
The Nazis murdered around 65,000 people in Stutthof and its subcamps, which were operational from September 2, 1939 until May, 9, 1945.
The use of gas chambers began in July 1944, while lethal injections were also used to kill inmates. The appalling conditions of the camp meant that many also died from starvation, exhaustion and disease.
Furchner is accused of aiding and abetting murder and attempted murder in 11,430 cases involving Jewish prisoners, Polish partisans and Soviet prisoners of war.
An elderly nursing home resident is to appear before a juvenile court in Germany for her alleged role in the systematic murder of more than 11,400 inmates at a Polish concentration camp. Irmgard Furchner, 96, was 18 when she worked as a secretary for the commander of Stutthof concentration camp (pictured in 2016) between June 1943 and April 1945, during which time some 11,430 inmates were killed
'In her function as a stenotypist and typist in the camp commandant's office of the former concentration camp Stutthof, she is alleged to have assisted those in charge of the camp in the systematic killing of those imprisoned there between June 1943 and April 1945,' the indictment from the Itzehoe public prosecutor's office reads.
Furchner has claimed she did not know people were being gassed at the camp, the BBC reported earlier this year.
Historian Janina Grabowska-Chalka, long-time director of the Stutthof Museum, described everyday life in the camp as brutal.
'In the Stutthof concentration camp, all prisoners, men, women and children, were obliged to work. Hard work that exceeded human strength determined the rhythm
