German justice opens the way for the trial of a former secretary of the Nazi camp

Berlin | The former secretary of the concentration camp, Nanjgerian, now risks prosecution for murder before German courts, which in recent years has expanded the scope of prosecutions to target those responsible for Nazi crimes.

Now 95, she will be the first woman to appear at a recent trial in Germany that attempted Nazi atrocities, as many men have been prosecuted.

The accused, whose prosecution did not reveal her identity, will be tried before a special juvenile court because at the time of the facts she was still a teenager.

He has been charged with “complicity in more than 10,000 murders.” In other cases, she is being tried for attempted murder, ”the Itzeho Prosecutor’s Office (northwest Germany) said in a statement.

Between June 1943 and April 1945 he was “accused by the prosecution” of serving as a stenographer and secretary to the commander of the former Stutof concentration camp for systematically massacring Jewish prisoners, Polish partisans and Russian Soviet prisoners of war. ”, Now 40 kilometers from the city of Gdansk in Poland.

“Enough” to judge

In this camp, for the first time outside Germany, about 65,000 people, mainly Jews from the Baltic countries and Poland were killed, shot in the back of the neck, shot with a cyclone b, and executed in their absence. For colds, infections and forced labor.

However, the conduct of the trial is not yet certain: due to her great age, the courts must first decide whether it is appropriate to bring the former employee of the camp before the court.

Asked by the AFP, the public prosecutor now says umes that she is “fit for trial”.

Prosecution spokesman Peter Mల్లెller-Rakov said the investigation into the case was “long overdue” by questioning witnesses in the United States and especially in Israel.

The “central legal question” of this process would be the question of the defendant’s “concrete responsibility” for collaborating in her alleged murders. This can only be clarified in court “during the trial of witnesses”.

Delayed justice

According to German media, a dozen legal investigations into Nazi crimes are underway in the country.

The NDR channel referred to the case of former personal secretary Irmgard F, commander of the Stuttof camp, in 2019 and now lives in a retirement home north of Hamburg.

Another file is a 95-year-old former SS guard from the same camp. He was charged last July with murder in several hundred cases. His visible ability was re-evaluated and a trial date was not determined.

In recent years, Germany has prosecuted and denounced many former ISIs and extended the accusation of complicity in the killings to camp guards, explaining the increased severity, even though the victims felt it was too late to do justice to it.

In July 2020, a Hamburg court sentenced 93-year-old former concentration camp guard Bruno Deki to 5,232 murders and two years in prison for attempted murder in Stuttof‌.

The most notable case was the 2011 sentencing of former guard John Demzanzuk to five years in prison by the Sobibor extermination camp.

Controversial as this late justice is, it allows the victims, their families, and the facts to be brought back into the public consciousness, explained to AFP, in a previous approach, by lawyer Andrzej Umansky, author of a book on East Shoa.