96-Year-Old Nazi Camp Secretary Caught After Going on the Lam Ahead of Trial on 11,000+ Counts of Accessory to Murder
Photo by MARKUS SCHREIBER/POOL/AFP via Getty Images.
A 96-year-old former Nazi concentration camp secretary was caught after going on the lam ahead of the beginning of her scheduled trial on Thursday in Germany on more than 11,000 counts of accessory to murder.
According to the Associated Press, citing court spokesperson Frederike Milhoffer, the woman, who was a secretary for the SS commander of the Stutthof concentration camp in Germany, “left her home near Hamburg in a taxi on Thursday morning, a few hours before proceedings were due to start at the state court in Itzehoe.”
Additionally, according to the AP:
The court issued the warrant and delayed the reading of the indictment until the next scheduled hearing on Oct. 19 because that couldn’t be done in the defendant’s absence.
The accused woman previously had “announced that she didn’t want to come” to court, but the statement did not provide sufficient grounds for detaining her ahead of the trial, Milhoffer said. Given the woman’s age and condition, she had not been expected “actively to evade the trial,” Milhoffer added.
The court said Thursday afternoon that the defendant had been caught and police would bring her to the court, German news agency dpa reported. A doctor was to examine whether she was fit to be jailed before the court decides whether or not to put her in custody.
Prosecutors argue that the woman was part of the apparatus that helped the Nazi’s Stutthof camp function during World War II more than 75 years ago.
The court said in a statement before the trial that the defendant allegedly “aided and abetted those in charge of the camp in the systematic killing of those imprisoned there between June 1943 and April 1945 in her function as a stenographer and typist in the camp commandant’s office.”
Despite her advanced age, the German woman was to be tried in juvenile court because she was under 21 at the time of the alleged crimes. German media identified her as Irmgard Furchner.
