VIENNA (Reuters) - Austrian authorities are investigating
an 85-year-old woman suspected of murder in a Nazi concentration
camp during World War Two.
New evidence from Poland suggested the woman may have committed murder in the
Majdanek camp near the Polish city of Lublin, state prosecutors
in Vienna said on Tuesday.
"We're trying to establish
whether the witness statements (from Poland) are sufficient
to identify this woman," said Gerhard Jarosch, a spokesman for state prosecutors in Vienna. "It's obviously difficult more than 60 years later."
According to media reports, the woman,
whom Austrian papers identified as Erna Wallisch, was a camp
warden in Ravensbrueck concentration camp, north of Berlin,
and Majdanek in 1942-1944.
Jarosch said a previous investigation
of the woman in 1973 was dropped due to a lack of evidence
linking her directly to Nazi genocide.
Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon
Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem, said he had discovered that
a camp warden was still alive in Austria and contacted the
Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), which investigates
Nazi crimes in Poland.
The institute tracked down five female
witnesses who said Wallisch had abused inmates in Majdanek,
he said.
"I am very happy and very
pleased that this is being re-investigated," Zuroff told Reuters by telephone. "This is a test for Austria; this is the last chance for Austria to do the right
thing. This would be correcting an historic injustice.
"Every effort has to be
made that she does not elude justice for whatever reasons,
whether it is health or age."
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