WWII camp secretary declines to testify as trial starts in Germany

A 96-year-old woman facing charges of abetting thousands of murders while working as secretary to the commandant of a World War II concentration camp remained silent at the start of her trial in Itzehoe near Hamburg on Tuesday.

The defendant, who entered the court in a wheelchair, would not answer any questions at this stage, her court-appointed lawyer, Wolf Molkentin, said.

The woman, named under German law only as Irmgard F, stands accused of aiding and abetting murder in more than 11,000 cases at the Nazi-run Stutthof camp, located near Danzig - now the Polish port city of Gdansk - during the war.

She is charged as a civilian employee in the service of the SS, with composing, sorting or drafting all the letters of the camp commandant, Paul Werner Hoppe, in the period June 1941 to April 1945, when the camp was liberated by the Red Army.

This meant that she had knowledge of all that was going on at the camp, including the killing methods.

The trial, which is being held in a juvenile court on account of the defendant's age at the time of the alleged offences, is likely to be one of the last relating to the Nazi era.

The defendant had been due to go on trial on September 30 but absconded on the morning of the trial. She was found within hours and held in custody for five days before being released under condition.

According to the central office responsible for investigating Nazi crimes in Ludwigsburg, around 65,000 people died in the German concentration camp and its subcamps as well as on the so-called death marches at the end of the war.

Thirty co-plaintiffs, including survivors of the camp from Poland and Israel, are being represented by 14 lawyers.