After a decades-long manhunt with no foreseeable end, the story of Nazi Aribert Heim, once the most-wanted war criminal on the planet, is finally emerging. Heim managed to elude authorities from the end of World War II until his death in 1992. It wasn’t until New York Times reporter Nicholas Kullish finally stumbled upon Heim’s briefcase in 2007 that the truth began to unfold.
If eyewitness stories are correct, Heim, a German gynecologist and member of Hitler’s elite Waffen-SS squadron, was a sadist who injected Jewish victims’ hearts with gasoline, performed needless surgeries without anesthetic and kept human skulls as souvenirs. These horrendous acts earned Heim the nickname “Dr. Death.”
For years, investigators in Germany and Israel assumed that Heim had fled to Latin America, like many other Nazi criminals. But with the discovery of the briefcase, Kullish learned that the German doctor?had traveled?through France, Spain and Morocco to eventually reach Cairo, where he converted to Islam and assumed a new identity.
Heim left behind two sons, the youngest of which (named Rudiger) visited him in Egypt for long spans. Rudiger?also sent his father letters from Germany, using the codename “Gretel” to throw off the authorities.
In 1990, Heim was diagnosed with cancer; he requested that his body be?donated to science upon his death. Because dissection is frowned upon in Muslim culture, however, he was ultimately buried anonymously in a common grave.
Heim may have eluded police, but it may not be accurate to say that he got away with his atrocious crimes without punishment. On the run, the former Nazi lived in constant fear of being discovered, and fell prey to con artists who took advantage of his inability to go to police. As Kullish puts it, “Heim built a prison of his own in Egypt that he could never escape.”
Kullish, along with co-author Souad Mekhennet, has published a book about Heim’s life called?The Eternal Nazi: From Mauthausen to Cairo, the Relentless Pursuit of SS Doctor Aribert Heim.
h/t BuzzFeed
edited by tw
