Former Concentration Camp Guard Dies
VIENNA, Austria (AP) — A woman who was being investigated in Austria for allegedly beating an inmate to death while serving as a Nazi concentration camp guard has died, authorities said Thursday. She was 85.
Erna Wallisch died in a hospital Saturday of unspecified causes, the Austrian Interior Ministry said.
Because of her death, Austrian authorities closed the murder investigation, the state prosecutor’s office said.
The case was launched last month after Polish authorities provided new evidence implicating her in the beating death of an inmate at Poland’s Majdanek death camp.
She had evaded prosecution on murder charges in the 1960s for lack of evidence, and efforts in the 1970s to charge her with battery and assault at Majdanek failed due to rules on the statute of limitations that apply to those crimes. There is no statute of limitations for murder in Austria.
Wallisch had steadfastly proclaimed her innocence.
The Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem criticized the Austrian government for inaction, and said Wallisch’s death “should serve as a reminder to all the governments which are dealing with the cases of Nazi war criminals that they had best expedite these prosecutions while justice can still be achieved.”
The group had tracked Wallisch down several years ago after receiving an anonymous letter suggesting she was alive in the Austrian capital, Vienna, it said.
It said she guarded and brought prisoners to gas chambers at Majdanek. She also served at Ravensbrueck, a concentration camp in northern Germany.