An 86-year-old woman accused by Nazi hunters of torturing and killing women and children while a death camp guard during World War II has died in hospital, prosecutors said Thursday.

German-born Erna Wallisch -- who was being investigated for allegations of murder in the Majdanek camp near the Polish city of Lublin -- died in hospital on Saturday, a spokesman for the state prosecutors' office, Gerhard Jarosch, told AFP.

The case would now automatically have to be dropped, he said.

Last month, prosecutors had said they were investigating new witness statements from Poland possibly implicating Wallisch in a murder in Majdanek.

An earlier investigation against her had been dropped in 1972 due to a lack of evidence.

But the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem insists she was involved in torturing and killing inmates of the Majdanek camp between October 1942 and January 1944.

She moved to Vienna shortly after the end of World War II and took Austrian nationality.

New statements from five women who survived the Majdanek death camp and said they had witnessed crimes committed by Wallisch had made prosecution "a very strong possibility," the Wiesenthal Center said.

In a reaction to Wallisch's death, the centre's chief Nazi-hunter, Efraim Zuroff, blamed foot-dragging by the Austrian authorities for allowing her to get away unpunished.

"Erna Wallisch and her family can thank the decades-long failure of successive Austrian governments for the fact that she ultimately was never punished for her role at the Majdanek death camp and Ravensbrueck concentration camp," Zuroff said in a statement released here.

"The fact that a woman who admitted taking people to be gassed and guarding them so that they could not escape was never held accountable for her heinous crimes is a badge of shame for Austria," he said.

It was "stark proof of the decades-long lack of political will in Vienna to bring Austrian Holocaust perpetrators to justice. Her death should serve as a reminder to all governments which are dealing with the cases of Nazi war criminals that they had best expedite these prosecutions while justice can still be achieved," Zuroff said.

wiesenthal.com