Court confirms murder conviction against 99-year-old Nazi warehouse worker

The Federal Court rejected her lawyer's argument that her work did not go beyond the performance of “everyday” typist duties. Its judgment, which upheld the lower court's decision, is final and cannot be appealed.

“The principle that typical, neutral professional activities of an 'everyday nature' are not punishable does not apply here, since the defendant knew about the actions of the main perpetrators and supported them in carrying them out,” write the judges of the Leipzig Higher Regional Court.

In the Stutthof camp near Danzig, then still called Gdansk, around 65,000 people died of hunger, disease or in the gas chambers. Among them were prisoners of war and Jews who were involved in the Nazis' extermination campaign.

Many were deported from there to Auschwitz to be gassed.

Furchner did not appear at the opening of her trial in 2021 and, at 96, is one of the oldest fugitive criminals in the world. The judges then issued an arrest warrant for her.

She is the latest in a series of people over 90 to be charged with Holocaust crimes, and the indictment is seen as a hasty attempt by prosecutors to seize a last chance to bring justice to the victims of some of history's worst mass murders.

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