Holocaust survivor, 86, confronts 96-year-old Nazi ‘secretary of evil’

Holocaust survivor accuses former concentration camp typist of being indirectly guilty of atrocities

File: 96-year-old defendant Irmgard F. (L), a former secretary for the SS commander of the Stutthof concentration camp, sits in the courtroom next to her lawyers Niklas Weber (2ndL) and Wolf Molkentin (3rdL), as the presiding judge Dominik Gross (4thR) and his team stand at the start of her trial at the courtroom in Itzehoe, northern Germany, on 19 October 2021 (POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

An 83-year-old Holocaust survivor accused the 96-year-old former typist at a Nazi concentration camp of indirectly perpetrating atrocities, even if all she did was stamp his father’s death certificate, he told the trial court.

Josef Salomonovic testified on Tuesday and recalled his harrowing experiences at the Nazi camp. He said that Irmgard Furchner should have “trouble sleeping at night” even as the former typist has claimed that she knew nothing about what was happening at the time.

The 83-year-old survivor recalled being six years old and the trauma of losing his father at that age after being given a lethal injection to the heart at Stutthof concentration camp.

“Maybe she has trouble sleeping at night. I know I do,” he said.

Ms Furchner is accused of being an accessory to the murder of 11,412 people at the Stutthof concentration camp between 1943 and 1945.

And Mr Salomonovic was the first survivor to testify at the trial of Ms Furchner, who refused to appear at the first trial — and who was declared a fugitive before she was arrested.

“The accused is making a mockery of the judiciary with her behaviour. Apparently, she does not feel bound by the law,” Onur Özata, a lawyer representing survivors of the camp had said at the time.

Ms Furchner worked as a typist at the Stutthof concentration camp where more than 65,000 people were murdered, around 28,000 of them Jewish.

Thousands were killed in the gas chambers, others were drowned in mud, shot to death, or killed by lethal injection.

She was 18 years old when she started working as a stenographer for the camp commandant. She maintains that she knew nothing about what was happening.

However, Mr Salomonovic rejects that. He told reporters that she was indirectly guilty even if all she did was to stamp his father’s death certificate.

“It is not easy to go over all this again. It’s a moral duty. It’s not pleasant,” he told the court as he held a photograph of his father for the court to see.

In a harrowing testimony, he told the court how he survived eight concentration camps including Auschwitz, but said that Stutthof was the worst, how his mother was stripped of clothes and possessions by the Nazis and how they shaved her head.

He said: “I was classified as a parasite. Everyone who couldn’t work was a parasite. I got into the cattle wagon and of course I didn’t know we were going to Auschwitz or that this was the last time I would see my father. He kissed me.”

His father remained behind in Stutthof, where he was killed with a lethal injection to the heart, he told the court.

Mr Salomonovic recalled his mother saying, “I have two requests, can you bring my son from the men’s camp to me in the women’s camp? And then the miracle happened. And then they brought my brother too.”

He added: “The worst was the hunger and the cold.”

The trial continues.