The chief Nazi hunter of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center headed
to South America on Sunday in a final public campaign to
locate the most wanted Nazi in the world and bring him
to justice.
The search for Dr. Aribert Heim, 94, the former Austrian doctor also known as "Dr. Death" who tops the Wiesenthal Center's list of "most wanted Nazis," has spanned nearly half a century since his 1962 disappearance in Germany ahead
of a planned prosecution for his war crimes.
Heim was indicted in Germany on charges that he murdered hundreds of inmates
by lethal injection at the notorious Mauthausen concentration
camp in Austria, where he was the camp's doctor during
the Holocaust.
"Our working assumption
is that Heim is hiding somewhere in Chile or Argentina," said Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the Wiesenthal Center's chief Nazi-hunter and Israel
director in a telephone interview with The Jerusalem
Post ahead of his departure.
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Zuroff conceded that this would likely be the "final
push" to uncover the nonagenarian, despite his status as the world's number one Nazi
suspect.
"We feel we are
approaching the end of the line," he said.
The Nazi hunter noted that
Heim's daughter lives in the southern Chilean city of
Puerto Montt, and that she is the most likely to be in
contact with her father, or at least have information
about his whereabouts.
His daughter had previously
said that her father died in 1993 in Argentina, but she
never provided a certificate of death or accepted his
inheritance.
A one million Euro bank account
in his name is active in Berlin, which Heim's children
could have received if they had proved he was dead.
During his trip, Zuroff will
be holding a press conference in Puerto Montt in a "final attempt" to reach anyone who has information about his current whereabouts.
"We are going into
her backyard," he said.
The German and Austrian governments
and the Wiesenthal Center are jointly offering 316,000
Euros, or about half a million US Dollars, for information
that will lead to Heim's arrest and prosecution by the
German Government.
In the interview, Zuroff said
that he did not expect to nab Heim on his current visit,
which will include meetings with government officials
and ad campaigns in Chilean and Argentinean newspapers,
but hopes that the effort will bear fruit in the near
future.
"We are putting
into place the tools to have him handed over in the coming
weeks or months," Zuroff said.
Last week, he blasted a German
judge for repeatedly refusing to allow investigative
measures requested by the special police task force to
find Heim which are routinely approved in murder cases
in Germany, and said that the judge's "obstructionist" moves have contributed to the failure to capture the wanted Nazi.
"Documents which
we have obtained clearly indicate that the efforts of
the German police to find Dr. Heim are being consistently
hampered by Judge Hans-Richard Neerforth's refusal to
approve routine investigations which are allowed as a
matter of course by all judges in murder cases in Germany," Zuroff said.
"We urge the German
judicial authorities to find a way to circumvent these
obstructive decisions to help facilitate the capture
of Dr. Heim so that he can finally be brought to justice
for his heinous crimes," he said.
jpost.com
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