VIENNA (AFP)---A 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, the Austrian news agency APA reported.

Quoting the interior ministry and public prosecutors, APA said 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.

The case would now automatically have to be dropped, the prosecutors office said.

Last month, prosecutors had said they were investigating new witness statements from Poland possibly implicating Wallisch to 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.

Last month, the Wiesenthal Center's chief Nazi-hunter, Efraim Zuroff, had urged the Austrian authorities to expedite the case in view of Wallisch's advanced age.

" People like Erna Wallisch do not deserve any sympathy," Zuroff said.

" The fact that they have not previously been convicted is a travesty of justice which can now be corrected."

Zuroff complained that Austria had failed in the past to prosecute Nazi war criminals.

By prosecuting Wallisch, who turned 86 this month, the authorities could have sent "a very powerful message that Austria has finally ceased to be a haven for the perpetrators of the Holocaust," Zuroff had said.

ejpress.org