Polish authorities have reopened an investigation¹ into crimes committed at Auschwitz and its satellite camps during World War II.

波兰当局重新启动一项调查，旨在查清二战时期在奥斯维辛及其周边集中营所发生的罪行。

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A previous round of investigations ended in the 1980s
It is estimated that one million people - mostly Jews and non-Jewish Poles - were killed at the Nazi³ death camp.

One aim is to track down any Nazi war criminals still living.

It is being carried out by the Institute of National Remembrance, a state body that investigates Nazi and communist-era crimes.

The new investigation was opened by the institute's branch at Krakow, which is near Auschwitz.

It was not immediately clear if investigations into other death camps operated across German-occupied Poland - such as Treblinka, Sobibor, Chelmno and Belzec - were also planned.

Poland originally launched investigations in the 1960s and 1970s into crimes at Auschwitz, but closed them in the 1980s without any indictments⁴（起诉，控告） being made.

During the communist era, Poland had difficulty questioning witnesses and perpetrators living abroad because the country was part of the Soviet⁵ bloc⁶.

"We do not discount the possibility of finding alive former employees of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, in which case they may be accused of crimes against the Polish nation," said Piotr Piatek, of the Remembrance Institute in Krakow.

'Tremendous implications'

Most camp employees were tried in Poland after World War II, accused of crimes against the country, although these trials were ended by an amnesty（特赦） in 1956.

The last time Poland prosecuted⁷ anyone for Nazi crimes was in 2001, when a Pole, Henryk Mania⁸, was sentenced to eight years in prison for taking parts in acts of genocide in Chelmno.

Leading international Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff praised Poland's reopening of the investigation.

He said it "could have tremendous implications" in paving the way for new prosecutions⁹, thanks to the precedent¹⁰（在前的） set by the conviction earlier this year of Ohio car worker John Demjanjuk, after his extradition¹¹ from the US for trial in Germany.

Demjanjuk was convicted of 28,060 counts of accessory to murder during the time he was a guard at the Sobibor extermination¹² camp in Poland.