Police: Murderer of Holocaust survivor within our grasp

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One year after the brutal murder of a Sydney Holocaust survivor, police say the killer is within their grasp.

 

The murder of Katherine Schweitzer, 81, whose body was dumped in a garbage bin outside her apartment in Sydney’s eastern suburbs on Dec. 27, 2006, prompted police to launch a mission called Strike Force Miriam.

Police say they believe the killer is from one of the units in her apartment complex.

“Without wishing to marginalize the people in those units or immediate area below, I believe one of them to be responsible. We’ve already most likely spoken to the person who did it,” Detective Russell Oxford, head of the strike force, told the Sun-Herald newspaper Thursday. “We are continuing to chip away at this one, very much in the hunt. The answers will come.”

 

Born Katherine Goldner in Budapest, Hungary, on Aug. 22, 1925, Schweitzer was active in the Hungarian resistance, forging birth certificates during the war. Her father, brother and sister all perished at the hands of the Nazis.

Schweitzer moved to Australia with her late husband Paul in 1956. She had no immediate family and made Jewish charities the beneficiaries of her will.

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