(JTA) — An alleged Nazi war criminal, Milivoj Ašner, died in an Austrian retirement home.
Ašner, 98, died Monday in the Carinthian city of Klagenfurt, the English-language Austrian Independent reported. As the chief of police in the Croatian town of Pozega during World War II, Ašner allegedly ordered the deportation of local Jews, Serbs and Roma to concentration camps run by the Croatian fascist Ustasha regime.
He moved to Austria and after the war and became an Austrian citizen.
The Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center criticized Austrian authorities for failing to bring Ašner to justice.
“The recent death of Milivoj Ašner in Austria unprosecuted for his crimes, is a travesty of justice which reinforces the total failure of the Austrian judicial authorities to adequately deal with the issue of Nazi war criminals during the past more than three decades,” Ephraim Zuroff, the center’s chief Nazi hunter, said in a statement.
