One of the two most wanted Nazi war criminals still at large,
former death camp doctor Aribert Heim, was in fact hunted
down and assassinated in 1982, a book to be published next
week claims.
Author Danny Baz, a former Israeli Air Force colonel, provides
no proof for his assertion in the book, written in French
and entitled "Ni oubli, ni pardon. Au coeur de la
traque du dernier nazi" ("Not forgotten or forgiven
- on the trail of the last Nazi.")
A leading French Nazi-hunter called the book "total
fantasy" on Saturday.
According to Baz, he was involved in the hunt by a secret
American group called The Owl, which he said found Heim in
Canada and took him to the island of Santa Catalina, off
the California coast near Los Angeles, where he was "tried
and executed."
Heim, who would now be 93, was a doctor at the Mauthausen
concentration camp in Austria, where he carried out deadly
medical experiments on prisoners.
He fled Germany in 1962 after police began investigating
him and has been reported living in various parts of the
world, including Latin America and Europe, as recently as
two years ago.
Heim is second on the list of wanted war criminals issued
by the Simon Weisenthal Nazi-hunting foundation after Alois
Brunner, chief aide to Adolf Eichmann, organiser of the "final
solution", who is thought to be in Syria.
Both Austria and Germany have offered rewards for information
leading to his capture.
'An absolutely true account'
In the preface to his book, written in the form of a novel,
Baz says The Owl was formed by an unidentified Mauthausen
survivor who made a fortune in Alaskan oil and funded it
in installments of six million dollars each, echoing the
six million Jews who died in the Nazi Holocaust.
He says the group received secret help from senior officials
in the US Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau
of Investigation and Israeli intelligence in hunting down
and eliminating around 10 Nazi war criminals.
"This book is an absolutely true account" of events,
according to Baz. "However, certain episodes have been
omitted for reasons of confidentiality."
A spokesman at the Austrian justice ministry, which put
a 50,000 euro (70,000 dollar) price on Heim's head as recently
as July, expressed surprise at the book's claims.
"We wouldn't have offered this reward if we had thought
he was already dead," Thomas Geiblinger told AFP.
Paris-based Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld told AFP that personally
he thought both Heim and Brunner were already dead, but of
natural causes, calling the offers of rewards "last-gasp
efforts" to determine the fate of the two men.
"It's total fantasy," he said of Baz's book, adding
that he had never heard of The Owl.
"If this organisation existed, you would think I might
have heard speak of it," he said.
nytimes.com
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