VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Austrian prosecutors are examining new evidence against a former Nazi concentration camp guard living in Vienna, officials said Tuesday.
Gerhard Jarosch, a spokesman for the Vienna public prosecutor's office, said authorities recently received material from the Polish Institute of National Remembrance that, among other things, alleges Erna Wallisch, now 85, beat a man to death at the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland.
«We are now checking to see if it was really her,» Jarosch said without providing more details.
Thomas Geiblinger, a spokesman for Austria's Justice Ministry, confirmed that authorities recently received evidence from Poland in response to a letter sent last year.
He declined to be more specific, other than to say the material included «a handful of testimonials» and has been passed onto prosecutors.
According to Efraim Zuroff, chief Nazi hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Wallisch guarded and brought prisoners to gas chambers at Majdanek.
«She was part of a whole system,» Zuroff said by telephone from Jerusalem, adding that he sent a letter to Austrian Justice Minister Maria Berger on Tuesday urging action.
Wallisch served both at Ravensbrueck, a concentration camp in northern Germany, and at Majdanek, said Zuroff, adding his center tracked her down some time ago as part of «Operation: Last Chance» after it received an anonymous letter suggesting she was alive in the Austrian capital.
«What I want to happen is for this woman to be arrested, prosecuted and held accountable for her crime and sent to jail for the rest of her life,» said Zuroff, who urged the Polish government in 2006 to seek Wallisch's extradition for trial.
Telephone calls to Wallisch's home in Vienna went unanswered Tuesday.
Austrian proceedings against Wallisch were withdrawn in late 1968 due to a lack of evidence for murder and because it was too late to prosecute her for assault and battery, said Winfried Garscha, who heads a research center for postwar trials at the Documentation Center of Austrian Resistance.

Garscha added there was no statute of limitations for murder in Austria, suggesting that the new evidence could lead to a new case.
In his letter to Berger made available to The Associated Press, Zuroff said he hoped to meet the minister in the near future to discuss mutual cooperation on the matter.
«The new evidence and witnesses uncovered by the Poles have created an unforeseen opportunity to achieve justice in this case and I therefore urge you to do everything possible to expedite the investigation in Vienna so that justice can be achieved,» Zuroff wrote.
In July, Austria offered ¤50,000 (US$73,860) rewards for information leading to the arrest of two fugitive Nazi criminals, Aribert Heim, a concentration camp doctor, and Alois Brunner, the right-hand man of Adolf Eichmann, the Gestapo officer who organized the extermination of the Jews.
Zuroff welcomed the move this summer and, in his letter Tuesday, urged Berger to keep up her efforts.
«We hope that you will continue to distinguish yourself from your predecessors by actively expediting the Wallisch case so that she will not be allowed to elude justice,» Zuroff wrote.

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