Tracking Down "Dr. Death"
Nazi Hunter Says He Is Close To Finding Most-Wanted SS Concentration Camp Doctor
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Photo
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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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.
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God this is a simple matter.
If anybody in US Intelligence has given a single thought as to where Al Quida operatves might base their operations from with impunity and within the Western Hemisphere?
It is further surprising that Israel has not played a bigger role in tracking down Nazis.
So what are they planning on doing with him after they capture him. War Crime, Life in prison, death penalty.
Heck, Helm probably won''t be able to stand the trip to Vienna for trial. While I agree that he was probably a very awful person he is about dead now. I wouldn''t suspect or expect this guy to be a threat to society at this time.
Next maybe he can turn his attention to more recent and current matters that really effect the world today. Say, maybe he can help find OBL. That would be useful research, not to mention Isreal is also intimately involved in the current "war on terror."
You are so wrong that it is stunning.
Go back under your rock.
As to what you do to a 94 year old. You confiscate his wealth and you imprison him. Not that dying in prison is in any way retribution for his crimes but it is the best we can do.
Posted by DTIAgain
Instead of rewriting history and denying the truth, talk to the survivors of the discrimination, torture, and murder of European Jews. Further, talk to the American and Russian soldiers who are eyewitnesses to the camps, gas chambers, and piles of bodies, and starving people. To describe the Jewish victimes as "only 700,000 Jews" diminishes life in every respect.
If that is all they have to go on, I don''t know how successful the trip is going to be.
Let me help:
1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Washington, DC
Posted by clestes
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H&ll, I would. Money is money it all spends the same
Outstanding!
Let me help:
1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Washington, DC
Posted by hungry1968 at 10:20 AM : Jul 09, 2008
Just how stupid are you hungry1968?
OH BUT IF WE HELP AND HAVE TO SEND TROOPS DOWN THERE THEN THE LIBERALS WILL CRY FOUL BECAUSE THEN THEY''LL SAY "I DONT WANT MY HARD EARNED TAX DOLLARS TO GO TO THIS POINTLESS WAR". GIVE ME A BREAK
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Posted by rafterman1
It was war time, lives are hard...being a prisoner does not help either. It''s like our animals shelters...when it gets over-populated you euthanize the poor souls!
hungry1968 I though that was pretty Funny
& redbds your a reetard.
You must be one of these STUPID Republicans that think that Bushie is still doing a good job.
How stupid are you !
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.
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.
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.
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.
Look up mk-ultra, to get an idea on what the CIA was interested in him for.
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?
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.
Regards,
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Posted by Nancy_Naive at 04:57 PM : Jul 09, 2008
+ report abuse
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NO DIFFERENT FROM WHAT YOU WOULD DO..
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
Posted by WogerWabbit at 10:04 PM : Jul 09, 2008
+ report abuse
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I know that it would not be coming from any liberal
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by libsluv2spit
July 9, 2008 11:41 PM PDT
- Yeah Hungry1968 - always use Mr. Zip with your address...
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Reply to this comment
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See all 41 Comments1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Washington, DC 20500-0001
Posted by IOWEIGN at 11:05 PM : Jul 09, 2008
+ report abuse
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well you have the address..what are you waiting for??? to grow some balls?? all talk...