Slow run...

96-year-old former Nazi secretary detained after fleeing authorities

Irmgard Furchner worked in the Stutthof concentration camp from 1943 to 1945.

BY LOUIS WESTENDARP

The half-day escape attempt of a 96-year-old former secretary at the Stutthof concentration camp, who was to face trial on Thursday but fled from authorities, ended at noon when the police brought her before a judge.

Irmgard Furchner is charged with being an accessory to 11,000 counts of murder, according to a statement released by Itzehoe Regional Court. She worked as a stenotypist and secretary between June 1943 and July 1945, thus allegedly aiding those responsible for the camp in the systematic killing of prisoners.

“Dear judge,” Irmgard F. wrote in a September 8 letter to the court, according to WELT, “Due to my age and physical limitations, I will not attend the court dates and ask my defense counsel to represent me. I would like to spare myself this embarrassment and not make a laughing stock of myself.” Nobody expected her to follow through with those announcements.

The former secretary, who usually resides in her home in Quickborn, in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, began her escape in the early hours of Thursday morning, Süddeutsche Zeitung reports. “She took a taxi,” said a court spokesperson. Her destination was the Norderstedt subway station, just outside Hamburg, but after that, her trail was lost.

Furchner did not get very far, and was detained by police at the outskirts of Norderstedt — roughly 10 kilometers from her home.

While she was on the run, over 50 journalists and spectators, as well as 12 representatives of the joint plaintiffs, defense attorneys, state prosecutors and others sat perplexed in the courtroom as it was announced that Furchner had failed to be picked up by police that morning.

An estimated 65,000 prisoners died in the Stutthof concentration camp during World War II. Furchner is considered a typical “desk criminal,” whose work enabled the Nazis’ destructive regime. In an earlier letter to the judge, she claimed she “Didn’t do anything as an 18/19-year-old to answer for as a 96-year-old.”