February 11, 2009 2:40 PM

Tracking Down "Dr. Death"

By
CBSNews
(CBS/ AP)  The Simon Wiesenthal Center has strong evidence that a former SS member known as "Dr. Death" is in southern Chile or Argentina, a top Nazi hunter for the human rights organization said Tuesday.

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.

CBS/ AP
Add a Comment See all 41 Comments
by libsluv2spit July 10, 2008 2:41 AM EDT
Yeah Hungry1968 - always use Mr. Zip with your address...

1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Washington, DC 20500-0001

Posted by IOWEIGN at 11:05 PM : Jul 09, 2008
+ report abuse

******

well you have the address..what are you waiting for??? to grow some balls?? all talk...
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by libsluv2spit July 10, 2008 2:39 AM EDT
t''''s good to know that war crimes and crimes against humanity are forever. Bush and the crew should be quaking in their boots.

Posted by WogerWabbit at 10:04 PM : Jul 09, 2008
+ report abuse

**************

I know that it would not be coming from any liberal
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by ioweign July 10, 2008 2:05 AM EDT
Tracking Down "Dr. Death"

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
Reply to this comment
by wogerwabbit July 10, 2008 1:04 AM EDT
It''s good to know that war crimes and crimes against humanity are forever. Bush and the crew should be quaking in their boots.
Reply to this comment
by libsluv2spit July 9, 2008 10:33 PM EDT
This might be just what his relatives want. For all we know, they may be relying on just such an investgation so they CAN collect on the German accounts...

Regards,


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Posted by Nancy_Naive at 04:57 PM : Jul 09, 2008
+ report abuse


**********

NO DIFFERENT FROM WHAT YOU WOULD DO..



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by toolmangler-2009 July 9, 2008 10:28 PM EDT
thought you talking about Kevorkian........I guess he''''s the ''''other'''' Dr. Death.....
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.
Reply to this comment
by rgrxx175 July 9, 2008 6:53 PM EDT
Dr. Death is another word for *** cheney
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by bradosol July 9, 2008 5:56 PM EDT
My father was a British soldier from 1939-45. Now he''s 94, the same age as Aribert Heim.

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?

Reply to this comment
by j_flood July 9, 2008 5:06 PM EDT
thought you talking about Kevorkian........I guess he''s the ''other'' Dr. Death.....
Reply to this comment
by djberson July 9, 2008 4:32 PM EDT
I think they should fine Dr. Death, torture him and decorate with his body parts. I could use a new doorstop myself. His severed foot would look pretty cool wedged under it.
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