A 95-year-old German woman has been charged with complicity in the massacre of 10,000 people at the Stutthof Nazi concentration camp.
While prosecutors did not name the woman, who allegedly worked as a secretary at the death camp, regional media identified her as Irmgard F. She has been living in an elderly care home in the north of Hamburg, Agence France-Presse reported on Friday.
Irmgard is accused of “having assisted those responsible at the camp in the systematic killing of Jewish prisoners, Polish partisans and Soviet Russian prisoners of war in her function as a stenographer and secretary to the camp commander” during her period of employment between June 1943 and April 1945, prosecutors said.
The prosecutors allege that the woman “aid[ed] and abett[ed] murder in more than 10,000 cases” and is complicit in attempted homicide.
“Given that some inmates survived their stay in the camp despite the hostile conditions, some of the acts has to be assessed judicially as attempted murder,” prosecutors noted, adding that they have interviewed witnesses in the case who are now living in Israel and the United States.
Because she was under 21, and therefore considered a minor at the time, she will be tried in juvenile court. She has denied knowledge that prisoners were gassed at the camp. Multiple reports have noted this is a rare case involving an alleged female concentration camp staff member.
While many Nazis and those who worked at death camps have died, German authorities have been working to investigate and prosecute survivors. Last year, 93-year-old Bruno Dey, a former SS guard at the Stutthof camp, was convicted and sentenced to a two-year suspended prison sentence. Dey, who was found to be complicit in the murders of at least 5,232 people, was also charged in juvenile court because he was 17 when he began working as a tower guard at the camp.
It remains unclear whether the unnamed woman will face trial, as her role is still being studied.
