Skip to main content

Irmgard Furchner: Nazi typist guilty of complicity in 10,500 murders

A former secretary who worked for the commander of a Nazi concentration camp has been convicted of complicity in the murders of more than 10,500 people.

Irmgard Furchner, 97, was taken on as a teenaged shorthand typist at Stutthof and worked there from 1943 to 1945.

Furchner, the first woman to be tried for Nazi crimes in decades, was given a two-year suspended jail term.

Although she was a civilian worker, the judge agreed she was fully aware of what was going on at the camp.

Some 65,000 people are thought to have died in horrendous conditions at Stutthof, including Jewish prisoners, non-Jewish Poles and captured Soviet soldiers.

Furchner was found guilty of aiding and abetting the murder of 10,505 people and complicity in the attempted murder of five others. As she was only 18 or 19 at the time, she was tried in a special juvenile court.

At Stutthof, located near the modern-day Polish city of Gdansk, a variety of methods was used to murder detainees and thousands died in gas chambers there from June 1944.


The court at Itzehoe in northern Germany heard from survivors of the camp, some of whom have died during the trial.

When the trial began in September 2021, Irmgard Furchner went on the run from her retirement home and was eventually found by police on a street in Hamburg.

Stutthof commandant Paul-Werner Hoppe was jailed in 1955 for being an accessory to murder and he was released five years later.

A series of prosecutions have taken place in Germany since 2011, after the conviction of former Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk set the precedent that being a guard was sufficient evidence to prove complicity.

That ruling also meant that civilian worker Furchner could stand trial, as she worked directly to the camp commander, dealing with correspondence surrounding Stutthof detainees.

It took 40 days for her to break her silence in the trial, when she told the court "I'm sorry about everything that happened".

"I regret that I was in Stutthof at the time - that's all I can say," she said.

Her defence lawyers argued she should be acquitted because of doubts surrounding what she knew, as she was one of several typists in Hoppe's office.

After the war, Furchner married an SS squad leader called Heinz Furchstam whom she probably met at the camp.

She went on to work as an administrative worker in a small town in northern Germany. Her husband died in 1972.

Historian Stefan Hördler played a key role in the trial, accompanying two judges on a visit to the site of the camp.

It became clear from the visit that Furchner was able to see some of the worst conditions at the camp from the commandant's office.

The historian told the trial that 27 transports carrying 48,000 people arrived at Stutthof between June and October 1944, after the Nazis decided to expand the camp and speed up mass murder with the use of Zyklon B gas.

Mr Hördler described Hoppe's office as the "nerve centre" for everything that went on at Stutthof.

During his evidence he read out evidence provided by Furchner's husband in 1954 when he said: "At the Stutthof camp people were gassed. The staff at the commandant's HQ talked about it."

Presiding judge Dominik Gross said it was "beyond imagination" that Furchner could not have noticed the smoke and stench of mass killing: "The defendant could have quit at any time."

Nazi crime cases since 2011


John Demjanjuk - jailed in 2011 for five years for his part in the murder of more than 28,000 Jews at the Sobibor death camp but released pending an appeal and died the following year aged 91

Oskar Gröning - the "Bookkeeper of Auschwitz", sentenced in 2015 as an accessory to the murder of 300,000 Jews. He never went to jail, dying in 2018 aged 96 during the appeals process

Reinhold Hanning - former SS guard at Auschwitz convicted of helping to commit mass murder in June 2016 but died a year later aged 95 with appeals still pending

Friedrich Karl Berger - former guard at the Neuengamme concentration camp, deported to Germany from the US in February 2021 aged 95. German prosecutors dropped charges against him and his current fate is unknown

Josef S - jailed for five years in June 2022 for assisting in the murder of more than 3,500 prisoners in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Aged 101, he is the oldest person to be convicted for Nazi-era war crimes in Germany, but because of age and ill health is unlikely to spend any time in prison

Furchner's trial could be the last to take place in Germany into Nazi-era crimes, although a few cases are still being investigated.

Two other cases have gone to court in recent years for Nazi crimes committed at Stutthof.

Last year a former camp guard was declared unfit for trial even though the court said there was a "high degree of probability" he was guilty of complicity.

In 2020, another SS camp guard, Bruno Dey, was given a two-year suspended jail term for complicity in the murder of more than 5,000 prisoners.

Source: BBC News, Paul Kirby & Robert Greenall, December 20, 2022





🚩 | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.




Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!



"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

Most viewed (Last 7 days)

Saudi Arabia executed 356 people in 2025, highest number on record

Analysts attribute increase to kingdom’s ‘war on drugs’ as authorities kill 356 people by death penalty Saudi authorities executed 356 people in 2025, setting a new record for the number of inmates put to death in the kingdom in a single year. Analysts have largely attributed the increase in executions to Riyadh’s “war on drugs”, with some of those arrested in previous years only now being executed after legal proceedings and convictions. Official data released by the Saudi government said 243 people were executed in drug-related cases in 2025 alone, according to a tally kept by Agence France-Presse.

The US reporter who has witnessed 14 executions: ‘People need to know what it looks like’

South Carolina-based journalist Jeffrey Collins observed back-to-back executions in 2025 after the state revived the death penalty following a 13-year pause Jeffrey Collins has watched 14 men draw their final breaths. Over 25 years at the Associated Press, the South Carolina-based journalist has repeatedly served as an observer inside the state’s execution chamber, watching from feet away as prison officials kill men who were sentenced to capital punishment. South Carolina has recently kept him unusually busy, with seven back-to-back executions in 14 months.

Oklahoma board recommends clemency for inmate set to be executed next week

A voting board in Oklahoma decided Wednesday to recommend clemency for Tremane Wood, a death row inmate who is scheduled to receive a lethal injection next week at the state penitentiary in McAlester.  Wood, 46, faces execution for his conviction in the 2001 murder of Ronnie Wipf, a migrant farmworker, at an Oklahoma City hotel on New Year's Eve, court records show. The recommendation was decided in a 3-2 vote by the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board, consisting of five members appointed by either the governor or the state's top judicial official, according to CBS News affiliate KWTV. Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Sitt will consider the recommendation as he weighs whether to grant or deny Wood's clemency request, which would mean sparing him from execution and reducing his sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Georgia parole board suspends scheduled execution of Cobb County death row prisoner

The execution of a Georgia man scheduled for Wednesday has been suspended as the State Board of Pardons and Paroles considers a clemency application.  Stacey Humphreys, 52, would have been the state's first execution in 2025. As of December 16, 2025, Georgia has carried out zero executions in 2025. The state last executed an inmate in January 2020, followed by a pause due to COVID-19. Executions resumed in 2024, but none have occurred this year until now. Humphreys had been sentenced to death for the 2003 killings of 33-year-old Cyndi Williams and 21-year-old Lori Brown, who were fatally shot at the real estate office where they worked.

USA | Justice Department Encourages New Capital Charges Against Commuted Federal Death Row Prisoners

On Dec. 23, 2024, former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. commuted the sentences of nearly all federal death row prisoners, sparing 37 men from execution. Just 28 days later, on Jan. 20, 2025, newly inaugurated President Donald J. Trump issued an executive order encouraging state and local prosecutors to pursue new charges against those same prisoners, reopening the possibility of capital punishment in state courts.

Burkina Faso to bring back death penalty

Burkina Faso's military rulers will bring back the death penalty, which was abolished in 2018, the country's Council of Ministers announced on Thursday. "This draft penal code reinstates the death penalty for a number of offences, including high treason, acts of terrorism, acts of espionage, among others," stated the information service of the Burkinabe government. Burkina Faso last carried out an execution in 1988.

Iran | Executions in Shiraz, Borazjan, Ahvaz, Isfahan, Ardabil, Rasht, Ghaemshahr, Neishabur

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); December 23, 2025: Mahin Rashidi, Abbas Alami, Naser Faraji, Tohid Barzegar and Jamshid Amirfazli, five co-defendants on death row for drug-related offences, were secretly executed in a group hanging in Shiraz Central Prison.  According to information obtained by Iran Human Rights, four men and a woman were hanged in Shiraz (Adel Abad) Central Prison on 17 December 2025. Their identities have been established as Mahin Rashidi, a 39-year-old woman, Abbas Alami, 43, Naser Faraji, 38, Tohid Barzegar, 51, and Jamshid Amirfazli, 45, all Kashan natives.

California | Convicted killer Scott Peterson keeps swinging in court — but expert says he’s not going anywhere but his cell

More than two decades after Laci Peterson vanished from her Modesto, California, home, the murder case that captivated the nation continues to draw legal challenges, public debate and renewed attention. As the year comes to a close, Scott Peterson, convicted in 2004 of murdering his pregnant wife and their unborn son Conner, remains behind bars, serving life without the possibility of parole. His wife disappeared on Christmas Eve in 2002, and a few months later, the remains of Laci and Conner were found in the San Francisco Bay.

M Ravi, the man who defied Singapore regime's harassment, dies

M Ravi never gave up despite the odds stacked against him by the Singapore regime, which has always used its grip on the legal process to silence critics. M Ravi, one of Singapore's best-known personalities who was at the forefront of legal cases challenging the PAP regime over human rights violations, has died. He was 56. The news has come as a shock to friends and activists. Singapore's The Straits Times reported that police were investigating the "unnatural death".

Singapore | Prolific lawyer M Ravi, known for drug death-penalty cases, found dead

Ravi Madasamy, a high-profile lawyer who represented death-row inmates and campaigned against capital punishment, was found dead in the early hours, prompting a police investigation into an unnatural death KUALA LUMPUR — Prolific Singapore lawyer Ravi Madasamy who tried to save Malaysian drug traffickers from the gallows found dead in the early hours with police investigating a case of unnatural death. Lawyer Eugene Thuraisingam, who had previously represented 56-year-old Ravi in court and described him as a friend, said he was deeply saddened by the news.