In a dramatic about-face, Austrian authorities have agreed
to reopen the case of a long-sought suspected Nazi criminal
who served as a guard at the Majdanek concentration camp,
the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center said Sunday.
Erna Wallisch, 85, who ranks fourth on the Wiesenthal Center's list of most-wanted
Nazi war criminals, has been living in a small apartment
on the bank of the Danube in Vienna with her name printed
on the door.
Austrian authorities had previously
refused to prosecute her due to the statute of limitations,
the organization's chief Nazi hunter and Israel Director
Dr. Efraim Zuroff said.
The Austrians agreed to reopen the
case after the Polish Institute of National Remembrance uncovered
five new witnesses, following lobbying efforts by the Wiesenthal
Center to have the case reopened, he said.
"This is a typical example
of the lack of political will up until now to prosecute someone
who was actively involved in the crimes of the Holocaust," Zuroff said. "It is high time that the case be taken seriously, as we are dealing with someone
whose hands are full of [the] blood of innocent victims." About 360,000 people perished at Majdanek, which is located in a suburb of Lublin,
Poland.
Meanwhile, the world marked International
Holocaust Remembrance Day on Sunday, coinciding with the
day Auschwitz was liberated.
"Naturally, each of us
will be preoccupied with his or her thoughts and with questions
that, to this day, have not received answers that it is possible
to live with," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting.
"Each one of us asks himself
what US President George W. Bush asked when he visited Yad
Vashem with us two weeks ago: Why weren't the railways bombed?
Why wasn't existing international strength used to slow the
pace of destruction?" At Jerusalem's Yad Vashem Holocaust museum, a group of 120 teens from 62 countries
around the world began a three-day youth conference about
the Holocaust.
The participants, who ranged in age
from 17 to 19, included Christians, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists.
On Monday, the European Parliament
will hold an official event in Brussels commemorating the
victims of the Holocaust.
The event will include addresses by
European Parliament President Hans-Gert Pottering, European
Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor and European Council
for Israel chairman Helmut Specht.
In New York on Sunday, Ambassador
to the UN Dan Gillerman said that for the third year, the
UN was keeping alive the memory of the Holocaust.
"This year will be very
emotional, since Zubin Mehta will be conducting a 90-member
Israeli orchestra in the very same hall where Zionism was
equated with racism, where Israel has been condemned and
vilified. This is very important and significant and sends
a clear message to the world that the UN and the international
community [are] committed to the memory of the Holocaust.
It is especially important [at a time] when a member state
denies the Holocaust. This sends a very clear message to
Iran that the world has not forgotten and it won't happen
again."
In Washington, meanwhile, US President
George W. Bush issued a statement saying he had been deeply
moved by his recent visit to Yad Vashem during his stay in
Israel.
"Sixty-three years after
the liberation of Auschwitz, we must continue to educate
ourselves about the lessons of the Holocaust and honor those
whose lives were taken as a result of a totalitarian ideology
that embraced a national policy of violent hatred, bigotry
and extermination. It is also our responsibility to honor
the survivors and those courageous souls who refused to be
bystanders, and instead risked their own lives to try to
save the Nazis' intended victims," he said.
"Remembering the victims,
heroes and lessons of the Holocaust remains important today.
We must continue to condemn the resurgence of anti-Semitism,
that same virulent intolerance that led to the Holocaust,
and we must combat bigotry and hatred in all forms, in America
and abroad."
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