17 July 2007
Austria is offering rewards for the capture of two war criminals believed to be alive and at large. The state is offering nearly US$ 70,000 for information leading to the arrest and capture of Aribert Heim, an SS doctor who killed concentration camp inmates with injections in the heart, and of Alois Brunner, an aide of Adolf Eichmann who organized deportations of Jews to death camps. “Austria is often blamed for having done too little,” Austrian justice minister Maria Berger told the ‘Reuters’ news agency. “I do not want to judge previous governments; I want to do now what we still can do.” Berger, a member of the centre-left Social Democrats, was appointed six months ago.
Austria has been accused for decades of dragging its feet over prosecuting Nazi war criminals and for being too lenient when they were brought to court. Even though Austrians pervaded the ranks of the Nazi Party and the army, the country for decades portrayed itself as ‘Hitler's first victim’ because it was occupied and annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938. Heim, who was known as ‘Dr. Death’ in the Mauthausen Nazi camp, was born in 1914 and is presumed to be living in Spain or Latin America.
