A 96-year-old woman who "aided in the killing of 11,430 inmates at the age of18" in a Nazi concentration camp will be tried as a minor.

Because she was 18 at the time, a 96-year-old woman accused of Nazi war crimes will be tried in a youth court.

Irmgard Furchner is accused of assisting in the murder of 11,430 inmates at the Stutthof concentration camp during WWII.

She was working as a secretary for camp commander Paul-Werner Hoppe at the time.

Furchner now lives in a nursing home in Quickborn, near Hamburg.

But she must appear at the ­juvenile chamber of the Itzehoe Regional Court on September 30 – one of the few women to face trial for Nazi crimes.

According to the indictment, "As a stenotypist and typist in the camp commandant's office of former concentration camp Stutthof, she is alleged to have assisted those in charge of the camp in the systematic killing of those imprisoned there between June 1943 and April 1945".

The museum of the Nazi KL Stutthof during the 71st anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi German concentration camp, KL Stutthof on May 9, 2016 in Sztutowo, Poland
The Nazis murdered around 65,000 people in Stutthof and its sub-camps near present-day Gdansk in Poland (Image: Getty)

The Nazis murdered around 65,000 people in Stutthof and its sub-camps near present-day Gdansk in Poland until the Red Army liberated it in May 1945.

Victims, including Jews, Poles and prisoners of war, were poisoned in gas chambers, shot or given lethal injections. Many died of disease and starvation.

While working there, Furchner, whose ­maiden name was Dirksen, met her future husband, SS man Heinz Furchner.

The death camp fence and camp barracks during the inspection at the site of the Stutthof death camp in connection with preparations to a trail against Germans accused of commiting crimes at the camp, Sztutowo, May 31, 1946
The death camp fence and camp barracks, Sztutowo, May 31, 1946

Christoph Heubner, of the International Auschwitz Committee, said: "The fact that this is only happening now is a failure and oversight of the German justice system that has spanned decades."

In March a German court ­declared a 96-year-old former Stutthof guard was unfit to stand trial on similar charges despite a "high degree of probability" that he was guilty.