Aribert Heim

Aribert Ferdinand Heim (born 28 June 1914 – allegedly died 10 August 1992) was a former Austrian doctor, also known as Dr. Death. As an SS doctor in a Nazi concentration camp in Mauthausen, he is accused of killing and torturing many inmates through various methods, such as direct injections of toxic compounds into the hearts of his victims. He is alleged to have lived in Cairo, Egypt under the alias of Tarek Hussein Farid for many years and reportedly died there on August 10, 1992 of rectal cancer. This has however not been proven to be 100% correct, and therefore it is hard to say if Heim in fact did die in 1992..

Early life

Heim was born in Bad Radkersburg, Austria-Hungary. He was the son of a policeman and a housewife. He studied medicine and did his medical studies in Vienna before volunteering to join the Waffen-SS in the spring of 1940.

Mauthausen concentration camp

In October 1941, Heim was sent into the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp, where he performed medical experiments on prisoners. He was later sent to an SS field hospital in Vienna.

The prisoners at Mauthausen called Heim "Dr. Death". For about two months (October to December 1941), Heim was in the camp near Linz, Austria called Ebensee, where he carried out similar experiments on Jews as the Auschwitz doctor Josef Mengele had done. Jewish inmates were poisoned with various injections directly into the heart - including petrol, water and poison - in order to induce death more quickly.

According to a former camp inmate, an 18-year-old Jewish youth came to the clinic with a foot inflammation. He was asked by Heim why it was that he was so fit. He replied that he had been a soccer player and swimmer. Instead of treating the prisoner's foot, Heim placed him under anesthesia, cut him open, took apart one kidney, removed the second and castrated him. The boy was decapitated and Heim boiled the flesh off the skull so it could be displayed, the former inmate said.

Later career

From February 1942, Heim served in the 6th SS Mountain Division Nord in Northern Finland, especially in Oulu's hospitals as an SS doctor. His service continued until at least October 1942.

On 15 March 1945 Heim was captured by US soldiers and sent to a camp for prisoners of war. He was released and worked as a gynecologist at Baden-Baden until his disappearance in 1962. He had been tipped off by an informant that the Austrian police were investigating him for war crimes. Subsequently, he disappeared, moving to Spain, Uruguay (where he opened up a psychiatric and gynecology clinic from 1979 to 1983), probably also Argentina and Paraguay,and finally to Egypt.

After Alois Brunner (Adolf Eichmann's top assistant), Heim has been the second most wanted Nazi officer.

Alleged death

Heim settled in Cairo in 1962 and lived there under the assumed name Tarek Hussein Farid. He allegedly died there from rectal cancer in 1992. According to a report in the New York Times in February 2009, there is an Egyptian death certificate, and Heim's son, Rudiger Heim, has confirmed that his father died in Cairo. The paper states that Heim had two sons.

In an interview at the family’s villa in Baden-Baden, Heim, 53, admitted publicly for the first time that he was with his father in Egypt at the time of his death. Heim says it was during the Olympics, and he died the day after the games ended.

In 2006, a German newspaper reported that he had a daughter, Waltraud, living in the outskirts of Puerto Montt, who claimed he died in 1993. However, when she tried to recover a million-dollar inheritance from him (on an account in his name), she could not provide any death certificate.

In August 2008, Heim's son asked his father be declared legally dead in order to take hold of his assets, and donate in order to maintain the documentation of actions that occurred at the camps.

Sightings and investigations

Following his escape there were various reports of his possible whereabouts as well as investigations aimed at bringing him to justice, some of which took place even after he had died in Egypt.

Heim was alleged to have moved to Spain after fleeing Paysandú, Uruguay, when he was located there by the Israeli Mossad. The German government is offering €150,000 for information leading to his arrest, while the Simon Wiesenthal Center launched Operation Last Chance, a project to assist governments in the location and arrest of suspected Nazi war criminals who are still alive. Tax records prove that, as late as 2001, Heim's lawyer asked the German authorities to refund capital gains taxes levied on him because he was living abroad.

Heim reportedly hid out in South America, Spain, and the Balkans, although it is not known if he ever actually did so. Efraim Zuroff, of the Wiesenthal Center, initiated an active search for his whereabouts, and in late 2005, Spanish police incorrectly determined his location as being Palafrugell. According to El Mundo, Heim had been helped by associates of Otto Skorzeny, who had organized one of the biggest ODESSA bases in Franco's Spain. ODESSA was obviously still in place, in one way or another. Press reports in mid-October 2005 suggested that Heim's arrest by Spanish police was "imminent". Within a few days, however, newer reports suggested that he had successfully evaded capture and had relocated either to another part of Spain or else to Denmark.

Fredrik Jensen, a Norwegian and former SS Obersturmführer, was put under police investigation in June 2007, charged with assisting Aribert Heim in his escape. The accusation was denied by Jensen.

According to a 2007 publication by former Israeli Air Force Colonel Danny Baz, Heim was kidnapped from Canada and taken to Santa Catalina off the Californian coast, where he was killed by a Nazi-hunting team codenamed “The Owl” in 1982. Baz himself claims to have been part of this group. The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, as well as the French Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld say this is not true.

In July 2007, the Austrian Justice Ministry declared that they would pay €50,000 for information leading to his arrest and extradition to Austria.

On 6 July 2008 Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the Wiesenthal Center's chief Nazi-hunter, headed to South America as part of a public campaign to capture the most wanted Nazi in the world and bring him to justice, claiming that Heim was alive and hiding in Patagonia, either in Chile or Argentina. He elaborated on July 15 2008 that he was sure Heim was alive and the groundwork had been laid to capture him within weeks.

See also

• List of living Nazis