A 77-year-old Holocaust survivor is on a mission to track down the man who stole her handbag.

Bertha Presz of Queens, New York, who grew up in Belgium and fled the Nazis as a child, had her bag stolen. The crime occurred while she was in the egg aisle at Brach's Glatt Kosher Meat Market in Kew Garden Hills.

When the police did little to help her, the grandmother of five took matters into her own hands, pounding the pavement handing out leaflets with photographs from the CCTV footage.

"It's very typical of my mother to do something like that," daughter Hindy Laster told NBC News New York. "It was very hot that day, and I begged my mother not to do it."

Thanks to Mrs Presz’s persistence, the police have renewed their investigation. “Maybe I’m a little stubborn,” she said.