Aribert Heim: SS-Hauptsturmführer

(28 June 1914 – 10 August 1992)

Early life

Heim was born on June 28, 1914, in Bad Radkersburg, Austria-Hungary, the son of a policeman and a housewife. He studied in Graz, and received his diploma in medicine from the University of Vienna in 1940.

Heim volunteered for the Waffen-SS in April 1940, rising to the rank of Hauptsturmführer (Captain).

Mauthausen concentration camp

Aribert Heim worked in Mauthausen for six weeks as a doctor starting in October 1941 at the age of 27. Prisoners at Mauthausen called Heim "Dr. Death", or the "Butcher of Mauthausen" for his cruelty.

According to witnesses, Heim worked closely with SS pharmacist Erich Wasicky. The two performed gruesome experiments together, such as injecting various solutions into the hearts of Jewish prisoners to see which killed them the fastest.

Heim was known for performing operations without anesthesia. For about two months (October to December 1941), Heim was stationed at the Ebensee concentration camp near Linz, Austria, where he carried out experiments on Jews and others similar to those performed at Auschwitz by Josef Mengele. According to Holocaust survivors, Jewish prisoners were poisoned with various injections directly into the heart, including petrol, phenol, available poisons, or even water, to induce death.

Later service

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 would remain imprisoned for a two-and-a-half year period. But while Heim's former colleague, Erich Wasicky, and dozens of others were tried and executed in the Mauthausen-Gusen camp trials, Heim was never prosecuted. In December 1947, he was released and worked as a gynecologist at Baden-Baden until his disappearance in 1962; he had telephoned his home and was told that the police were waiting for him. Having been questioned on previous occasions, he surmised the reason (an international warrant for his arrest had been in place since that date) and went into hiding. According to his son, Rüdiger Heim, he drove through France and Spain onward to Morocco, moving finally to Egypt via Libya.

Investigations and possible sightings

In the years following his disappearance, Heim was the target of a rapidly escalating manhunt and ever-increasing rewards for his capture. Following his escape there were reported sightings in Latin America, Spain and Africa, as well as formal investigations aimed at bringing him to justice, some of which took place even after he had apparently died in Egypt. The German government offered €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, but only his presence in Spain has ever been confirmed. Efraim Zuroff, of the Wiesenthal Center, initiated an active search for his whereabouts, and in late 2005, Spanish police incorrectly determined he was in Palafrugell, Spain. According to El Mundo, Heim had been helped by associates of Otto Skorzeny, who had organised one of the biggest ODESSA bases in Franco's Spain.

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 evaded capture and had moved either to another part of Spain or to Denmark.

Fredrik Jensen, a Norwegian and a former SS Obersturmführer, was put under police investigation in June 2007, and charged with assisting Heim in his escape. The accusation was denied by Jensen. In July 2007, the Austrian Ministry of Justice declared that it would pay €50,000 for information leading to his arrest and extradition to Austria.

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

In 2008, Heim was named as one of the ten most wanted "Nazi war criminals" by the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Later years and death

Heim and his former wife, Friedl, had two sons. He also had a daughter, Waltraud, born out of wedlock in Chile.

In 2006, a German newspaper reported that he had a daughter, Waltraud, living on the outskirts of Puerto Montt, Chile, who said he had died in 1993. However, when she tried to recover a multimillion-euro inheritance from an account in his name, she was unable to provide a death certificate.

In August 2008, Heim's son Rüdiger asked that his father be declared legally dead, in order to take hold of his assets. He claimed he intended to make a donation to humanitarian projects working to document the atrocities committed in the camps.

After years of apparently false sightings, the circumstances surrounding Heim's escape, life in hiding and death were jointly reported by the German broadcaster ZDF and The New York Times in February 2009. It was reported that Heim died on August 10, 1992, in Cairo, Egypt with his cause of death being colorectal cancer. In the later years of his life, Heim had named himself Tarek Farid Hussein. People in Egypt who knew Heim said they did not know he was a wanted man.