The people do understand that we need time.

Hannah Lessing

She also claimed that the general settlement fund, set up in January 2001 contains a capped amount of $210 million and has a filing period of two years.

Claims are being processed and the amount will be divided up between the victims pro rata.

Understanding

Ms Lessing told Sarah Montague for BBC HARDtalk that the fund will start to pay out from May 2003 onwards, but denied that the fund was not working.

"The people do understand that we need time," she said.

"Our advantage is that we received a year ago $150m from the Austrian Government as an immediate payment, so it covers again a certain time until we are at the end of the filing period and we can again make payments."

"We are losing on a daily basis, people are passing away."

Election

Ms Lessing - who is Jewish and the daughter of a holocaust survivor - went on to comment on the fact that, in the year 2000, a third of the Austrian people voted for the far-right Freedom Party under the then leadership of Joerg Haider.

Joerg Haider, has praised elements of Nazi Germany

"I think that the Freedom Party has maybe 3% of old Nazis as electorate, then you have some followers," she said.

"We have from the election analysis seen that many people voted for Haider because they were really tired of the old coalition system of socialism conservatives."

She also offered an explanation as to why the Freedom Party has been so successful in Austria.

"The issue was that the Freedom Party has an image to the outside of a young very dynamic party and if, from time to time they say something on a gathering of old Nazis, [the Austrian people] don't care about it," she said.

"I don't agree that we shouldn't care about it."

Legacy

Ms Lessing also explained why she decided to take on her role when her grandmother died in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

"For me sometimes people say 'why do you feel like you have to deal with it, you're Jewish, you're a daughter of a survivor' and I say 'because I'm Austrian and this is my history'," she said.

Nearly a million Austrians served in the German army during Word War II. However Ms Lessing maintained that you cannot blame the entire Austrian nation for Nazi atrocities.

"There are many, many who were guilty, but collectively the whole Austrian people were not guilty."

You can hear the HARDtalk interview in full at the following times:

BBC News 24 (times shown in GMT)
13 March 0430, repeated 2230

BBC World (times shown in GMT)
13 March 0430, repeated 1130, 1630, 1930, 0030 .