Austria: Holocaust survivor attacked at former concentration camp
Police search for four masked youths suspected of firing plastic gun pellets at two visitors to concentration camp
An official said police are searching for four masked youths who may have injured two French visitors to a former Austrian concentration camp, one of whom was a Holocaust survivor, with pellets fired from a plastic gun.
Alois Lissl, director of security in Upper Austria province, said Monday police are also investigating reports the youths shouted "Heil Hitler" and "Sieg Heil" at Italian visitors to the camp.
Lissl said the incidents happened Saturday before a ceremony commemorating the liberation of the camp, which was affiliated with the Mauthausen concentration camp.
The Nazis shot, gassed, beat or worked to death about half the 200,000 inmates in Mauthausen's main camp and its affiliates.
"The assailants opened fire on a group of 15 visitors with what police believe was plastic ammunition; two people were wounded," the Austrian newspaper Wiener Zeitung quoted Mauthausen Committee Chairman Willi Mernyi as saying.
He said one of the visitors photographed an assailant with his cell phone.
Interior Minister Maria Fekter said police were in possession of one of the guns that was apparently used in the attack and said that such incidents were "intolerable".
