Austria has offered U.S. $68,971 rewards for information leading to the arrest of two fugitive Nazi criminals, including a key figure in the planning and execution of the murder of Jews during World War II.

A notice posted on the Justice Ministry's Web site this week features photos and
physical descriptions of Aribert Heim, a concentration camp doctor, and Alois Brunner, the right-hand man of Adolf Eichmann, the Gestapo officer who organized the
ex

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extermination of the Jews.

The notice, available in four different languages, states that individuals - not
authorities who would have a duty to prosecute criminal acts - will be paid
US$68,917 for information enabling Austrian authorities to capture either of the men, both now in the 90s.

According to the notice, Heim is strongly suspected of murdering numerous prisoners in the Mauthausen concentration camp by injecting them directly in the heart with a deadly poison.

Brunner is strongly suspected of being significantly involved in the deportation of
Jewish persons with the aim of murdering them, the notice reads. It also states that
Brunner is presumed to have mutilated hands and just one remaining eye.

Heim practiced medicine in Germany after the war and fled after the government charged him in 1962. Brunner is believed to have found refuge in Syria.

An estimated 65,000 Austrian Jews perished in the Holocaust.