Today's BBC website carries a thought-provoking article about Irmgard Furchner, who was a teenage typist at Stutthof concentration camp from 1943 to 1945. According to the report: ''Historian Stefan Hördler played a key role in the trial, accompanying two judges on a visit to the site of the camp.
It became clear from the visit that Furchner was able to see some of the worst conditions at the camp from the commandant's office.
The historian told the trial that 27 transports carrying 48,000 people arrived at Stutthof between June and October 1944, after the Nazis decided to expand the camp and speed up mass murder with the use of Zyklon B gas.
Mr Hördler described Hoppe's office as the 'nerve centre' for everything that went on at Stutthof.
During his evidence he read out evidence provided by Furchner's husband in 1954 when he said: 'At the Stutthof camp people were gassed. The staff at the commandant's HQ talked about it.'
Presiding judge Dominik Gross said it was 'beyond imagination' that Furchner could not have noticed the smoke and stench of mass killing: 'The defendant could have quit at any time.'''
Furchner, now 97 years of age, and the first woman to be tried for Nazi crimes in decades, was given a two-year suspended jail term. Although she was a civilian worker, the judge agreed she was fully aware of what was going on at the camp.
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While not really the remit of ODT, there are many issues worth debating. At what point does a person become responsible for a crime? Is a teenage girl complicit merely by saying nothing? Is it reasonable to prosecute an individual for their part in what must have been a form of 'group think'? Or was the holocaust so atrocious that anyone who knew about it and did nothing should be punished regardless of any other considerations?
What do you think about the proposal below?
IMAGE: BBC
It is proposed that though Irmgard Furchner knew of over 10,000 murders she was not directly involved and should be forgiven for her silence