Officials in Spain , Denmark report signs of 'Dr. Death'
BERLIN -- An intensive hunt was underway yesterday in Spain and Denmark for one of the last important Nazi war criminals.
Spanish officials confirmed that dozens of searches have been conducted in the Costa Brava coastal region for Aribert Heim, a 91-year-old former concentration camp doctor whose sadistic experiments on human subjects earned him the nickname ''Dr. Death."
A Spanish official with knowledge of the manhunt said in a brief telephone interview with the Globe that Heim is thought to be ''on the move" as units from the organized crime and fugitive branches of the Spanish police close in on suspected hiding places. But there were also European media reports that Heim might have fled to Denmark , a country where he was said to have a network of support.
Efraim Zuroff, chief chaser of Nazis for the Simon Wiesenthal Center , said there is concrete evidence not only that Heim is alive but that he has made Spain his hideout for the past several years. ''The strong likelihood is that he is still in Spain," Zuroff said by phone from the center's office in Jerusalem, citing records of repeated bank transfers from relatives in Germany to banks in the Mediterranean resort region near the French border. ''About $400,000 has been transferred from his family since 2000."
Zuroff described Heim as the second-most wanted Nazi war criminal still at large, after Alois Brunner, a member of Adolf Hitler's inner circle. Some investigators believe Brunner is living in Damascus under the protection of the Syrian government; others think he is dead.
In Berlin , German Interior Ministry spokesman Rainer Lingenthal said of the hunt: ''There is the utmost interest in seeing one of the last big notorious criminals receiving his just punishment."
Born in Austria in 1914, Heim studied medicine at the University of Vienna and was an ardent admirer of Hitler, eager to enlist in the Waffen SS -- the Nazi wing of the German military. He became a doctor at Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald , and Mathausen concentration camps. At Mathausen, a camp near Linz , Austria , he murdered and tortured hundreds of Jews in cruel ''medical" experiments, according to survivors. For example, he tested ''pain tolerance" on patients by conducting surgery without anesthesia; other subjects were injected with chemical substances -- including gasoline -- after which he timed their death throes with a stopwatch.
Heim was arrested by the US Army soon after Germany 's World War II surrender, but was released under murky circumstances. He ran a gynecological clinic and coached the local hockey team in the spa town of Bad Nauheim until 1962, when he vanished -- apparently tipped that prosecutors were on the verge of bringing war crimes charges. Since then, he is believed to have hidden in Argentina, Denmark, and Spain, initially supplied with money and false documents through the ''Odessa" network of SS veterans, according to investigators.
Both Germany and Austria have outstanding arrest warrants for Heim; Germany has posted a reward equivalent to $150,000 and has released a computer-enhanced photograph depicting how he might look today.
A special German police squad discovered last year that an Italian painter and his French wife, both residing on the Costa Brava and with shadowy ties to Heim's family, had been receiving regular transfers of money from one of Heim's sons. Spanish searches over the weekend concentrated in the scenic coastal region between the towns of Palafrugell and Roses. In addition to searching luxurious vacation cottages, authorities were said to be checking homes for the elderly and clinics catering to wealthy European expatriates.
But there was worry that Heim had fled to Denmark , a simple passage since formation of the European Union has made border checks a rarity. According to the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, a phone account was recently opened in Copenhagen by one of Heim's family members.
The search for the fugitive Nazi intensified after an Israeli vacationing in Spain reported seeing a man who looked like Heim, who stands 6 feet tall, wears size 12 shoes, and has a distinctive jagged scar on his right cheek.
Heim was the last major quarry of Wiesenthal, the famous Nazi hunter who died last month. Zuroff, a New York native with the same fierce tenacity as his mentor, is dedicated to seeing the man called Dr. Death behind bars. ''Even at this late date, it is still possible to bring Nazi war criminals to justice," he said.
Zuroff praised German investigators, but criticized Spain, which even after the fascist Franco era has been seen as indifferent to rooting out Nazi fugitives. ''The Spanish police are cooperating, but Spain 's overall attitude toward war criminals is sad," he said.
The Boston Globe, 18.10.05
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