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VIENNA - Austria has offered a reward for information on two alleged Nazi criminals still at large and is considering further money incentives for similar cases in the future, the justice ministry said Friday.
The ministry announced on its website late Thursday that it was offering 50,000 euros (68,890 dollars) to anyone who could provide ‘evidence that can lead to finding, capturing and convicting’ SS doctor Aribert Heim and Alois Brunner, a co-worker of renown Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann.
‘Should we receive concrete proof, we are perfectly ready to offer further rewards’ in the future, Justice Minister Maria Berger told journalists Friday.
She said it was important to take action while Heim and Brunner were still alive and added there was evidence that they were.
Heim, who would now be 93 and was apparently last sighted in Latin America, is believed to have killed numerous prisoners at the Mauthausen concentration camp in northern Austria in 1941 by injecting poison into the heart.
Brunner, now 95, worked at the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna with Eichmann as well as in Greece and Hungary where he is suspected of having been ‘significantly involved in the deportation of Jewish persons with the aim of murdering them,’ a notice on the ministry’s website said.
The reward notice, available in German, English, French and Spanish, features biographical information and photos of the two men as well as ways to contact the ministry with information about their whereabouts.
The ministry specified that ‘this reward will only be paid to private persons and not to authorities who have the duty to prosecute criminal acts.’
Friday, the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem welcomed the move from Vienna.
‘We congratulate the Austrian authorities for joining in the important efforts to bring these leading Nazi war criminals to justice and hope that the added prize money will help make the difference in their apprehension,’ the Center’s main Nazi-hunter, Efraim Zuroff, said in a statement.
‘The passage of time in no way diminishes the crimes committed by Brunner and Heim and therefore their prosecution remains just as important, if not even more important, today than it would have been years ago,’ he added.
khaleejtimes.com
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