SANTIAGO, Chile, July 9, 2008
Tracking Down "Dr. Death"
Nazi Hunter Says He Is Close To Finding Most-Wanted SS Concentration Camp Doctor
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Efraim Zuroff, director of the Jewish Simon Wiesenthal Center, said of Aribert Heim: "He tortured many inmates before he killed them at Mauthausen, and he used body parts of the people he killed as decorations." (AP Photo/Santiago Llanquin)
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Interactive Lessons Of Auschwitz A look back at the notorious Nazi death camp where some 1.5 million people perished.
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Interactive World War II Remembering the more than 50 million lives lost.
Efraim Zuroff, the center's director in Israel, will fly Wednesday to the southern Chilean city of Puerto Montt, where SS doctor Aribert Heim's daughter has lived for years.
Zuroff and center Latin America director Sergio Widder will then travel to Bariloche across the Andes in Argentina on Friday.
Searchers think he's alive, Zuroff said, because a bank account with euro1.2 million (US$1.6 million) and other investments in Heim's name in Berlin have not been claimed by Heim's children. To do that, they would have to produce proof that Heim was dead.
Zuroff said the center has received information "that has strong potential" to help efforts to find Heim.
Heim, who would be 94, tops the center's list of most-wanted Nazi war criminals. A reward of euro315,000 (US$495,000) is being offered jointly by the center and the German and Austrian governments for information leading to his capture.
Heim, known as "Dr. Death," was indicted in Germany on charges he murdered hundreds of inmates at Mauthausen concentration camp, where he was camp doctor.
"His crimes are fully documented by himself, because he kept a log of the operations that he carried out," Zuroff said. "He tortured many inmates before he killed them at Mauthausen, and he used body parts of the people he killed as decorations."
After World War II, Heim was held for two and a half years by the United States military but was released without being tried.
He disappeared in 1962, when he was tipped off that the indictment by German authorities was imminent, according to Zuroff.
The Chilean government is helping in the investigation, Zuroff said, adding that he and Widder had a good meeting with Arturo Herrera, director of Chile's police.
The hunt for Heim has taken investigators from the German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg all around the world. Besides his home country of Austria and neighboring Germany where he settled after the war, tips have come from Uruguay in 1998, Spain, Switzerland and Chile in 2005, and Brazil in 2006, said Heinz Heister, presiding judge of the Baden-Baden state court, where Heim was indicted in absentia on hundreds of counts of murder in 1979.
Thousands of German war criminals were prosecuted in West Germany after World War II. In the 1970s Western democracies began a hunt in earnest for Eastern European collaborators who had fled West claiming to be refugees from communism, and the end of the Cold War gave access to a trove of communist files in the 1990s.
© MMVIII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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See all 41 Comments1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Washington, DC 20500-0001
Posted by IOWEIGN at 11:05 PM : Jul 09, 2008
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well you have the address..what are you waiting for??? to grow some balls?? all talk...
Posted by WogerWabbit at 10:04 PM : Jul 09, 2008
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I know that it would not be coming from any liberal
Let me help:
1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Washington, DC
Posted by hungry1968 at 10:20 AM : Jul 09, 2008
Just how stupid are you hungry1968?
Posted by redbds at 10:43 AM : Jul 09, 2008
Yeah Hungry1968 - always use Mr. Zip with your address...
1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Washington, DC 20500-0001
Regards,
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Posted by Nancy_Naive at 04:57 PM : Jul 09, 2008
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NO DIFFERENT FROM WHAT YOU WOULD DO..
Posted by j_flood at 02:06 PM : Jul 09, 2008
What did the man ever do to you? If I end up with terminal ''anything painfull'' I would ask him to do the honors. (Pain hurts) besides, he never ''forced'' anybody to die against their will.
I''d welcome a survey of old men and women - British, American, German, Italian, etc to learn what they think about Heim and others - as opposed to younger, computer-savvy people (including me) who didn''t participate or suffer in the Second World War.
How often do we listen to old men and women, even when they are the ones with the first-hand experience?
I don''t suggest such a survey should influence Heim''s fate - that''s a matter for legal process - and there''d surely be a very wide variety of opinion.
But shouldn''t we hear their views before their time runs out?
Look up mk-ultra, to get an idea on what the CIA was interested in him for.
This type of pursuit places in the mind of anyone who may carry out a heinous crime like this just what the afteraffects would be.
We all would expect no less if it had been one of our relatives murdered. There is no statue of limitations for the worst of crimes.
Wow that really narrows it down!! maybe in about 100 years he could finally locate the CITY!!
The guy is 94 now, who cares what happens!! he managed to live a nice cushy life till now and has 1.6 million in the bank. Nothing they can do now to him would make any difference. Time to move on.
Obviously, he''s not a robust, young man anymore.
If they came across him in a hospital on a life support machine, what would they do? Quietly, pull the plug? Get a warrant and have him extradited? What?
Is it their policy that until justice is fulfilled, it doesn''t matter how long it takes or how old the individual becomes?!
I think this situation provokes interesting questions and suggests what it means to be human and whether or not mankind has the capability to ever rise above barbarism, etcetera.
You must be one of these STUPID Republicans that think that Bushie is still doing a good job.
How stupid are you !
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