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THE unrelenting rain of a Patagonian downpour drills through humid air to batter
the lace- curtained windows of a modest chalet. It slices
through the smoke billowing from the chimney, bounces off
the windscreens of the cars belonging to the couple within,
and terrorises their dog as it pads, sodden, around the
garden.
It is a standard suburban scene, replicated throughout the Chilean port of Puerto
Montt, but one whose every detail is intensely evaluated
by a 59-year-old man who has travelled thousands of miles
from home to sit outside it.
Efraim Zuroff is a Nazi hunter.
And the couple who own the chalet with its lace curtains,
dog and chimney smoke are Waltraud and Ivan Diharce,
the daughter and son-in-law of Aribert Heim, the most-wanted
Nazi believed to be still alive.
Heim was called Dr Death because
of his lethal experiments on inmates at the Mauthausen
concentration camp in Austria.
For Dr Zuroff, who leads the
Simon Wiesenthal Centre's search for war criminals, his
capture would be the final prize of a 28-year hunting
career.
He has continued the work
of Mr Wiesenthal, an Austrian survivor of the Nazi death
camps, who dedicated his life to documenting the crimes
of the Holocaust and hunting down those perpetrators
still at large. "When history looks back, I want people to know the Nazis weren't able to kill
millions of people and get away with it," Mr Wiesenthal said before his death three years ago.
As the founder and head of
the Jewish Documentation Centre in Vienna, the freelance
Nazi hunter – usually with the co-operation of the Israeli,
Austrian, former West German and other governments –
ferreted out nearly 1,100 Nazi war criminals.
They included Adolf Eichmann,
the administrator of the slaughter of the Jews; Franz
Murer, the "Butcher of Wilno", and Erich Rajakowitsch, who was in charge of the "death transports" in Holland.
Dr Zuroff's own hunting career
has, too, been meritorious.
An Israeli historian by training,
and an American by background, he was involved in the
exposure, extradition to Croatia, and conviction in Zagreb
of former Jasenovac commandant Dinko Sakic, who was found
living in Argentina.
But time is running out for
him to capture Heim. In fact, it may already have expired,
as the Nazi's family claim he died in 1993. But Dr Zuroff
says most of the evidence suggests Heim is alive. His
children have not taken possession of a $1.9 million
(£950,000) bank account in his name in Berlin, which
would be theirs if they could present proof of his death.
They would also have access to some $1.26 million in
stocks and bonds if Heim were proven dead.
However, Dr Zuroff cannot
avoid the fact that he and his team are seeking out a
94-year-old man.
They are battling against
not only the considerable wits of their prey, but also
against biology, which is uncontrollable by either hunted
or hunter.
Dr Zuroff is disturbed by
his belief that governments are reluctant to take action
against the surviving war criminals; that they would
rather human frailty took the burden of responsibility
from their shoulders.
"In most cases,
it's not even a case of amassing the evidence – the problem
is simply getting the governments involved to do the
right thing," he said. "The problem really is a political problem, which is the sad part of it."
Austria, Latvia, Estonia and
Lithuania are Nazi havens, he claimed, and the more time
that passes, the less pressing that catching Nazis becomes
to the wider world. "Time is running out," said Dr Zuroff, 59, who vows not to retire until there are no more Nazis left
unpunished.
"This issue, unlike
antisemitism, is coming to an end," he said.
Last week, the Simon Wiesenthal
Centre launched the latest stage of its Operation: the
Last Chance project in Santiago, 657 miles north of Puerto
Montt.
As suggested by its name,
it is a campaign to bring remaining Nazi war criminals
to justice. It offers financial rewards for information
leading to their arrest and conviction. To date, the
initiative – a joint project of the Simon Wiesenthal
Centre and philanthropic organisation the Targum Shlishi
Foundation – has been launched in Germany, Lithuania,
Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Romania, Austria, Croatia, and
Hungary.
As part of its latest stage,
Dr Zuroff, along with the centre's Latin American representative,
Sergio Widder, have held meetings with police and justice
officials in Chile and Argentina in order to tighten
the net around Dr Death.
Hundreds of Nazis wanted for
war crimes escaped to Latin America after the Second
World War, mainly to Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Brazil.
Already, the advertising campaign – assisted by a reward
of 310,000 (£250,000) – has borne fruit. Two tip-offs,
which the centre believes carry provenance, sent Dr Zuroff
down to the most southern tip of Chile, to the chalet
with the lace-curtains. An informant said he had seen
Heim's son-in-law deliver food to an ostensibly empty
place.
Dr Zuroff hopes the cash incentive
will be enough to yield more information.
"We have to find
the weak link," he said. "Maybe someone will be disgruntled and decide that, for 310,000, it's worth it
to turn the tables on someone who's as terrible as Heim."
Terrible barely does justice
to the crimes the centre believes Heim committed.
As a doctor with Adolf Hitler's
SS, he injected the concentration camp prisoners' hearts
with petrol, removed their organs without anaesthetic
and timed their deaths with a stopwatch.
According to Dr Zuroff, he
infamously decapitated one victim and boiled the head
to remove the flesh so he could keep it as a paperweight
– one of a number of trinkets made from body parts that
decorated his office.
Heim has been on the run for
46 years, since evading police in Germany in 1962, and
continues – if he is still alive – to evade the authorities.
At the modest chalet, a housekeeper
opens the door a tiny crack, barely enough to let the
edges of the sheet of rain inside. Waltraud and Ivan
Diharce are not in, she insists, before retreating.
Yet this is not enough to
deter Dr Zuroff.
The Last Nazi Hunter has waited
28 years for the Last Nazi. A few more hours, days or
weeks in a warm car on a suburban Chilean street is nothing
to him.
The search continues for top
ten most wanted Nazis
1. Dr Aribert Heim Location
unknown
A doctor in Sachsenhausen,
Buchenwald and Mauthausen concentration camps who murdered
hundreds of camp inmates by lethal injection.
2. Ivan Demjanjuk USA
Participated in the mass murder
of Jews in Sobibor, served in Majdanek and Trawniki SS-training
camp.
3. Dr. Sandor Kepiro Hungary
A Hungarian gendarmerie officer
who participated in the mass murder of more than 1,200
civilians in Novi Sad, Serbia.
4. Milivoj Ašner Austria
A police chief of Slavonska
Podzega, Croatia who took an active role in the persecution
and deportation to death of hundreds of Serbs, Jews,
and Gypsies.
5. Soeren Kam Germany
Participated in the murder
of anti-Nazi Danish newspaper editor Carl Henrik Clemmensen.
Stole the population registry of the Danish Jewish Community
to help in the roundup and subsequent deportation of
Danish Jews to camps, where dozens were murdered.
6. Heinrich Boere Germany
Murdered three Dutch civilians
as a member of the Silbertanne Waffen-SS death squad.
7. Karoly (Charles) Zentai
Australia
Participated in manhunts,
persecution and murder of Jews in Budapest in 1944.
8. Mikhail Gorshkow Estonia
Participated in the murder
of Jews in Belarus.
9. Algimantas Dailide Germany
Arrested Jews who were later
murdered by Nazis and Lithuanian collaborators.
10. Harry Mannil Venezuela
Arrested Jews and Communists
who were later executed by Nazis and Estonian collaborators.
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