A 96-year-old former Nazi concentration camp secretary was allegedly informed 'down to the last detail' of every murder method used at the Stutthof camp, a court has heard.
Irmgard Furchner, who has been dubbed the 'secretary of evil', was wheeled into the courtroom by guards with a facemask and large sunglasses covering her face and a pink beret over her white hair on Tuesday.
She is standing trial for complicity in the murder of more than 10,000 people at Stutthof camp in Nazi-occupied Poland between 1943 and 1945, a charge which she denies.
Furchner was just 18 when she started work at the camp on the Baltic coast, and is the first woman to stand trial in decades over crimes connected to the Third Reich.
She had knowledge of all of the horrific events at the camp due to her work for the commandment of the camp and was informed 'down to the last detail' about the murder methods practised there, prosecutor Maxi Wantzen told the court in the northern town of Itzehoe.
He added that through her work as the camp secretary, she ensured 'the smooth functioning of the camp', reports the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper.
On Tuesday, Furchner was seen holding a black and white cane as she sat in her wheelchair wearing a pink coat, scarf and beret.
An arrest warrant was issued after Furchner fled her retirement home on September 30 and headed to a metro station as her trial was set to begin in the northern town of Itzehoe.
The pensioner managed to evade police for several hours before being apprehended in the nearby city of Hamburg and temporarily held in custody by authorities.
Furchner was released five days later 'under the condition of precautionary measures', said court spokeswoman Frederike Milhoffer, adding that it was 'assured that she (Furchner) will appear at the next appointment'.
According to media reports, the accused has been fitted with an electronic tag to monitor her whereabouts.
Last week, the court heard how SS men in white medical uniforms would pretend to be doctors who were simply measuring prisoners' height.
But instead, the prisoner's height was used as the setting for a specially engineered 'neck shot' device.
Around 30 prisoners were then shot in the neck within a two-hour period.
In other cases, prisoners were forced into chambers which were filled with poisonous Zyklon B gas.
Here prisoners screamed in agony, scratched at their skin until it was red raw, and even pulled their own hair out.
Furchner, born Irmgard Dirksen on May 19, 1925, worked as secretary for the concentration camp commandant Paul Werner Hoppe.
As she was only 18 at the time, she is being tried in a juvenile court, even though she is almost a hundred years old.
The prosecution claimed that her work as a secretary assisted the wider 'killing apparatus' of the concentration camp.
The prosecutor described how on July 22, 1944, SS Obersturmbahnführer Paul Maurer gave orders that a group of prisoners at Stutthof be transported to Auschwitz for extermination.
Four days later, a list of prisoners to be transferred was written at the commandant's office at Stutthof.
At 6.05pm, commandant Hoppe, then gave confirmation by radio that the transport was en
route.
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Nazi commandant Paul Werner Hoppe |
The prosecution then claimed that this message must have been written by Furchner.
Furchner's lawyer, Wolfgang Molkentin, told the court in a statement that his client denies that she is 'personally guilty of a crime'.
He said: 'Irmgard Furchner does not deny the crimes of the Shoah [Holocaust].