Aribert Heim

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Aribert Heim (Dr. Death) (born June 28, 1914) is 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. Along with Alois Brunner, Heim — who would now be (as of 2008) in his early nineties — is one of the last major Nazi fugitives still at large.

However, according to a 2007 publication by former Israeli Air Force Colonel Danny Baz,^[1] Heim was kidnapped from Canada and taken to Santa Catalina off the Californian coast, where he was killed by a Nazi hunting team code named “The Owl” in 1982.^[2] 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.^[3]

Heim's family previously said that he died in 1993 in Argentina, but did not provide a certificate of death or accept his inheritance.^[4]^[5]

1 Biography
2 Time in Mauthausen concentration camp
3 Later career
4 Chase
5 References
6 See also
7 External links

[edit] Biography

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.

[edit] Time in Mauthausen concentration camp

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

The prisoners in Concentration Camp 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. "Heim scared his prisoners to death," said a survivor.^{[citation needed]} Jewish inmates were poisoned with various injections directly into the heart in order to induce death more quickly.

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 his head boiled in order to remove all the flesh, so that Heim could keep it and display for its "perfect teeth". ^[6]

[edit] Later career

From February 1942 he served in the 6th SS Mountain Division Nord in Northern Finland, especially in Oulu's hospitals as a SS doctor. His service continued until at least October 1942.^[7]

On March 15, 1945, Heim was captured by US soldiers and sent to a camp for prisoners of war. He was released under dubious circumstances and worked as a gynecologist at Baden-Baden until his disappearance in 1962.^[8] 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 gynecologist clinic from 1979 to 1983), probably also Argentina and Paraguay,^[8] possibly also Egypt and Brazil,^[9] and then finally Spain again until 2005.^[8]

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

[edit] Chase

Heim has reportedly hidden out in South America, Spain, and the Balkans. Efraim Zuroff, of the Wiesenthal Center, has initiated an active search for his whereabouts, and in late 2005, Spanish police determined his location as being Palafrugell.^[10] 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.^[11] 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.

In early 2006, Heim was believed to be in Chile, where his daughter Waltraud is reported to have lived since the early 1970s in Puerto Montt. Asked about her father's whereabouts by the Chilean authorities, under requests of Germany, Waltraud claimed that Aribert had 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.^[5]

Heim was alleged to have moved to Spain after fleeing Paysandú, Uruguay when he was located there by the Israeli Mossad.^[12] 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. In the last five years, €300,000 have been withdrawn from his accounts and transferred to Spain and Denmark. An Italian couple of Palafrugell, Spain has contact with one of Heim's sons in the Costa Brava region of Spain.

The money transferred from the account raised the suspicions of Israeli officials, who contacted the Criminal Institute in the German state of Baden-Württemberg. After the Criminal Institute looked into the account, they concluded that the money was Heim's, which suggested that Heim was still alive, and that his family had lied about his alleged death in South America due to cancer. German investigators, together with the Simon Wiesenthal Center, discovered Heim's secret bank accounts in Berlin in the early 2000s. They proved to hold €1 million (£680,000, $1,350,000) in cash and other assets. Heim has been assumed to be still alive, and this is substantiated by the fact that none of his three children ever claimed any of this money. 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.

Fredrik Jensen, a Norwegian and former SS, was put under police investigation in June 2007, charged with assisting Aribert Heim in his escape. The accusation was denied by Jensen.^[13]

In July 2007, the Austrian Justice Ministry declared that they would pay €50,000 for information leading to his arrest and extradition to Austria.^[14]