Presiding Judge Dominique Gross read out the verdict against defendant Irmgard Forschner for her role in what prosecutors described as the “brutal and insidious murder of prisoners at the Stutthof camp during WWII Poland,” where “more than 60,000 people were murdered by lethal injections of benzene or phenol directly into their hearts, dead or starved. Others were forced out in the winter without clothes until they died of exposure, or were executed in a gas chamber .” This is the result of what may be one of the last Holocaust trials in the country.
The defendant sat in a wheelchair in the courtroom, wearing a white hat and medical mask as the verdict was read: she was found guilty on thousands of counts of murder. She was the first woman in decades to be tried in Germany for Nazi-era crimes.
Defense attorneys sought their client’s acquittal, arguing that the evidence failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Forschner had knowledge of the systematic killings in the camp, meaning there was no evidence of intent required for criminal liability .
Irmgard Forchner mostly declined to answer questions during the trial. But as the trial drew to a close, she Forchner repented and broke her silence, telling the regional court in the northern city of Itzehoe, “I’m sorry for everything that happened.”
As proceedings were due to begin in September of 2021, Forschner attempted to flee the retirement home where she lives and headed for a subway station. She managed to elude the police for several hours before being arrested in the nearby city of Hamburg and detained for five days.
