A 97-year-old German woman who was the personal secretary to an SS officer running an extermination camp during World War II was convicted by a German court for her role in the deaths of more than 10,000 people, USA Today reports.
The judges in the trial determined that it would have been impossible for Irmgard Furchner to not have understood the information she was transcribing as stenographer for the commander of the camp, located near present-day Gdansk, Poland. Although her defense team argued that she was ignorant about the mass murder of people, Furchner said in her closing statement that she was sorry for what had happened and regretted that she had been at Stutthof, the name of the camp, at the time.
The Itzehoe state court in northern Germany ruled that Furchner was an accessory in the murders of 10,505 people and sentenced her to a two-year sentence, but suspended prison time.