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Aribert Heim
Aribert Heim
Nazi Hunters Pursue ‘Dr. Death’ in Chile
by
Josh Katz
Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff has chased reputed Nazi war criminal Aribert Heim to Chile in an attempt to bring him to justice for past crimes.
30-Second Summary
Aribert Heim, known as Dr. Death, tops the charts of The Simon Wiesenthal Center’s list of “Most Wanted Nazi War Criminals.” He would now be 94 years old.
Holocaust survivors say that Heim tested the limits of a human pain by removing subjects’ body parts and carrying out operations without anesthetics. At the Mauthausen concentration camp, he allegedly preferred injecting “petrol, water or poison” into the hearts of the victims.
“He tortured many inmates before he killed them at Mauthausen, and he used body parts of the people he killed as decorations,” Zuroff said.
Zuroff, the director of The Simon Wiesenthal Center, said Heim is most likely living in Chile, where his daughter lives, or in Argentina. A German bank still holds just less than $2 million in Heim’s name, unclaimed by his family, substantiating the notion that he is still alive.
Zuroff has been trying to bring Nazi war criminals to justice under Operation Last Chance, and he has faced opposition along the way. In June, he charged Austria with shielding Milivoj Asner, who ranks fourth on the center’s list. In February, German courts denied Denmark’s request to extradite former Nazi SS officer Søren Kam.
John Demjanjuk, accused of being “Ivan the Terrible,” has been extradited numerous times, even though at one point a U.S. court said he was not Ivan the Terrible but a different war criminal.
Holocaust survivors say that Heim tested the limits of a human pain by removing subjects’ body parts and carrying out operations without anesthetics. At the Mauthausen concentration camp, he allegedly preferred injecting “petrol, water or poison” into the hearts of the victims.
“He tortured many inmates before he killed them at Mauthausen, and he used body parts of the people he killed as decorations,” Zuroff said.
Zuroff, the director of The Simon Wiesenthal Center, said Heim is most likely living in Chile, where his daughter lives, or in Argentina. A German bank still holds just less than $2 million in Heim’s name, unclaimed by his family, substantiating the notion that he is still alive.
Zuroff has been trying to bring Nazi war criminals to justice under Operation Last Chance, and he has faced opposition along the way. In June, he charged Austria with shielding Milivoj Asner, who ranks fourth on the center’s list. In February, German courts denied Denmark’s request to extradite former Nazi SS officer Søren Kam.
John Demjanjuk, accused of being “Ivan the Terrible,” has been extradited numerous times, even though at one point a U.S. court said he was not Ivan the Terrible but a different war criminal.
Headline Link: ‘Most wanted Nazi sought in Chile’
Israel’s head Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff has traveled to Chile to search for “the most wanted Nazi fugitive,” known as Dr. Death. “The reason we are going [to Patagonia],” Zuroff said, “is of course the fact that Heim’s daughter lives in Puerto Montt, and we think there is a strong likelihood that he might be in that area or in the area between Puerto Montt and Bariloche [Argentina].”
Source: The BBC
Background: ‘Nazi hunters say German judge blocking search for “Dr Death”’
On June 30, 2008, Agence-France Presse reported that “The Simon Wiesenthal Centre accused a German judge on Monday of blocking the search for the world’s most wanted Nazi war crimes suspect, Aribert Heim, also known as ‘Dr. Death.’”
Source: Agence-France Presse
Related Topics: Recent developments with accused Nazi war criminals
Efraim Zuroff charged the Austrian government with protecting the 95-year-old Milivoj Asner, ranked No. 4 on the Wiesenthal Center’s list of most wanted Nazi war criminals, the Associated Press reported on June 20, 2008. Austria called Asner an “upstanding” citizen who should live the end of his life peacefully; he “stands accused of persecuting hundreds of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies and dispatching them to their deaths in WWII-era Croatia, which was ruled by a Nazi puppet regime.”
Source: International Herald Tribune (AP)
On Feb. 26, 2008, findingDulcinea reported that, “Denmark has indicted 86-year-old former Nazi SS officer Søren Kam. But Munich courts refused to extradite Kam, a German citizen.”
Source: findingDulcinea
A U.S. appeals court upheld a deportation order for alleged Nazi War criminal John Demjanjuk, findingDulcinea wrote on Feb. 4, 2008. He was accused of being “Ivan the Terrible.”
Source: findingDulcinea
Reference: The Simon Wiesenthal Center
On April 30, 2008, The Simon Wiesenthal Center released its seventh Annual Status Report on the Worldwide Investigation and Prosecution of Nazi War Criminals. The center rates the diligence of world nations in their efforts to bring Nazi war criminals to justice, and provides a list, located on the bottom of the page, of the “Most Wanted Nazi War Criminals.” Dr. Aribert Heim ranks No. 1 on the list.
Source: The Simon Wiesenthal Center
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