A German court on Tuesday convicted a 97-year-old woman of being an accessory to murder for her role as a secretary to the SS commander of the Nazis' Stutthof concentration camp during World War II.
The Itzehoe state court gave Irmgard Furchner a two-year suspended sentence, German news agency dpa reported. That was in line with what prosecutors had sought; the defence had called for her acquittal.
Furchner was accused of being part of the apparatus that helped the camp function. About 65,000 people are thought to have died in horrendous conditions at Stutthof, including Jewish prisoners, non-Jewish Poles and captured Soviet soldiers, BBC reported. Furchner, since she was only aged 18 or 19 then, was tried at a special juvenile court.
She was alleged to have 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.
Stutthof camp was located near modern-day Polish city of Gdansk and a variety of methods was used to murder detainees. Thousands died in gas chambers there from June 1944, BBC reported.
(With PTI inputs)
