A former secretary of a Nazi concentration camp has been indicted for “complicity in murders in more than 10,000 cases”, announced the German justice, Friday February 5. “In other cases, she is prosecuted for complicity in attempted murders “, wrote the Itzehoe public prosecutor’s office (Land of Schleswig-Holstein) in a press release. It would be the first woman to be tried in legal proceedings against Nazi abuses, while several men have been prosecuted in recent years by German justice.
The public minister accuses him of having, between June 1943 and April 1945, “assisted those responsible for the systematic slaughter of Jewish prisoners, Polish partisans and Russian Soviet prisoners of war in his function of stenographer and secretary to the commander of the former Stutthof concentration camp”, located 35 km from the city of Danzig (now Gdansk), then in German territory, today in Poland. Insofar as “some prisoners survived their stay in the camp despite the hostile conditions, some of the acts must be judged judicially as an attempt” of murder, specifies the prosecution.
The latter did not specify either the name or the age of the accused who should however be over 90 years old. A teenager between 1943 and 1945, she will eventually be tried before a special court for minors. However, it is not yet certain that a trial will be held: the courts must first decide whether, because of her old age, she is suitable for possible referral to a court.
In recent years, Germany has tried and condemned several former SS and extended to camp guards the charge of complicity in murder, illustrating the increased severity, although deemed very late by the victims, of its justice.
