Austria looks set to agree to reopen the case of a suspected Nazi criminal who served as a guard at the Majdanek concentration camp, the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center has announced.

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 organisation’s chief Nazi hunter and Israel Director Dr Efraim Zuroff said.

But officials 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. Dr Zuroff 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. 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.”

When contacted, Wallisch refused to discuss the allegations against her.

wienerzeitung.at