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A son of notorious Nazi doctor Aribert Heim was quoted as saying Sunday that
he wants his father declared legally dead so he can take
control of his money and donate some of it to help document
the suffering that occurred at a former concentration camp.
Ruediger Heim told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper that his father - dubbed Dr.
Death and atop the Simon Wiesenthal Center's list of
most-wanted suspected Nazi war criminals - should officially
be declared missing and then dead.
He reiterated he has not had
any contact with his father since he fled Germany in
1962, save two short notes in his family's mailbox.
"Between 1962 and 1967, two notes appeared in our mailbox. There was a single
sentence written on them, 'I am doing fine.' But if those
letters were really from my father, I do not know," the paper quoted him as saying.
Heim also said that he has no idea if his father, who would be 94 today, is alive
or dead. He told the paper he is working with a lawyer
to see how he can have his wanted father declared missing
and then dead so as to get control of the former Nazi's
bank account.
He said he, his brother and
sister only discovered in 1997 that a bank account in
his father's name existed. If he could get control of
the money, he told the newspaper he would donate to help
document suffering in the Mauthausen concentration camp
near Linz, Austria, where his father worked as camp doctor
in October and November 1941.
So far, Heim's children have
made no claim to a bank account with 1.2 million euros
($1.78 million) and other investments in his name. To
do that, they would have to produce proof that their
father is dead.
In July, the world's top Nazi-hunter
said he had made progress in finding the 94-year-old
Doctor Death, who stands accused of torturing Jewish
prisoners at Mauthausen and who may have been living
for decades in Argentina or Chile.
Efraim Zuroff, head of the
Israeli branch of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told a
news conference that his mission to the southern reaches
of the Americas led him to at least four people who claimed
to have seen Aribert Heim in the 45 days leading up to
his visit.
Zuroff's two-week mission
took him to the southern Chilean fishing town of Puerto
Montt, where Heim's daughter lives, and to the town of
San Carlos de Bariloche, across the border in Argentina.
The Nazi hunter believes Heim
is hiding out somewhere between the two towns, separated
by the Andes mountain range. haaretz.com
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