The tall, thin, elderly German was a familiar figure on the streets of Cairo.
Every day, he could be seen walking around the city on his
daily 15-mile circuit that would take him to the mosque
where he had converted to Islam, followed by a visit to
his favourite cafe.
The old man was a popular part of the little community that
based itself around the modest hotel that became his long-term
home.
To the locals, he was known as Tarek Hussein Farid, and they respected and liked
him.
If his friends suspected that Tarek had a hidden past,
they never inquired too deeply. Had they done so, they
may have been shocked by what they found.
For if new evidence is to be believed, Tarek was, in
fact, Aribert Heim — a former SS doctor who had carried
out the most gruesome ‘experiments’ at Mauthausen concentration
camp.
After the war, survivors recalled how the so-called ‘Doctor
Death’ would inject substances such as petrol, water
or poison directly into his victims’ hearts.
He would often perform operations without anaesthesia
to see how much pain humans could endure, and in one
notorious ‘experiment’ he castrated and decapitated a
young athlete, before having the flesh boiled off his
skull, to be used as a display piece.
Heim’s actions earned him a place as the most-wanted
Nazi war criminal still thought to be at large. But the
discovery of a battered and rusting briefcase held in
storage by the Cairo hotel owner now indicates that the
hunt may finally be over.
The briefcase holds a yellowing paper trail of Heim’s
life. Stuffed with medical
records, bank statements and even a magazine article
about the hunt for him, the documents suggest that Heim
and Tarek were one and the same.
Crucially, the briefcase even contains an application for Egyptian residency,
on which Tarek’s place and date of birth are identical
to those of Heim— Bad Radkersburg, Austria, June 28,
1914.
The medical records show that Heim suffered from rectal
cancer, which eventually killed him in 1992.
‘He must have been suffering from serious pain,’ says his son, Rüdiger Heim,
who admits to having known of his father’s true location
for many years.
Mr Heim says that his father’s body was buried in an anonymous common grave,
although he did get a death certificate, a copy of which
was recently obtained from the Egyptian authorities and
shown to the world last week.
However, there are some who think that the evidence is
far from conclusive. Chief among them is Dr Efraim Zuroff,
the Israeli director of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre —
the charitable organisation that tracks down surviving
Nazi criminals.
‘We can’t sign off on a story like this because of some
semi-plausible explanation,’ says Dr Zuroff, who last
year travelled to Argentina and Chile in the hope of
catching Heim.
‘Keep in mind that these people have a vested interest in being declared dead.
It’s a perfectly crafted story. That’s the problem; it’s
too perfect.’
If Dr Zuroff is right, then could Rüdiger Heim be continuing
to shelter his father — now a venerable 94 — in some
new location?
It sounds implausible, but it is by no means impossible.
Under German law, a son cannot be forced to give evidence
against this father.
Some have speculated that the story is simply a way for
Rüdiger to gain control of his father’s estimated £1
million investments, which were frozen by the German
authorities in the Seventies.
And there are good reasons why Heim, knowing investigators
were closing in, might have conspired in a last, desperate
attempt to elude them. For he may have been part of a
whole network of Nazi sympathisers and survivors who
have found shelter in the Middle East.
That suggestion is raised by Rüdiger’s admission that
one of the reasons why he had helped protect his parent’s
new identity was that he did not wish to ‘bring trouble’
for his father’s friends in Egypt.
Whatever the truth, Heim’s case draws attention to the fact that while the global
hunt for Nazi war criminals focused on South America
— where sympathisers are known to have sheltered men
such as Josef Mengele, the ‘Angel of Death’ — many, in
fact, were given sanctuary far closer to home, in the
Middle East.
The truth is that countries such as Egypt and Syria welcomed
perhaps hundreds of such ‘guests’ in the aftermath of
World War II.
One street in post-war Damascus even featured a type
of boarding house at 22 Rue George Haddat that was crammed
with Germans in exile.
Among their number was Franz Stangl — the former commandant
of Treblinka concentration camp, where one million Jews
were murdered — who forged a new identity as a textile
worker. Strangl’s wife and family subsequently joined
him in the city, but they chose to flee after a local
police chief made advances to their 14-year-old daughter.
Another notable Nazi who found sanctuary in Syria was Alois Brunner, who had
run the Drancy internment camp near Paris, from where
tens of thousands of Jews were deported to concentration
camps such as Auschwitz.
In 1954, Brunner fled to Syria, where he assumed the
name Georg Fischer and was
widely reputed to have worked for the Syrian government
as an adviser on methods of political suppression.
Brunner was reported to have
died in 1992 at the age of 80, though he was lucky to
have survived that long. He was twice the victim of letter
bombs, sent to him in 1961 and 1980, both of which are
believed to have been dispatched by Mossad, the Israeli
intelligence service. The bombs did, however, cost him
an eye and several fingers.
Most controversial of all, though, are the rumours that the former Egyptian President
Colonel Nasser not only offered sanctuary to Nazi war
criminals, but actively employed them to help him develop
arms that could be used against Israel itself.
Reputed to be among them was the celebrated SS Colonel
Otto Skorzeny, who had led the daring rescue of Benito
Mussolini from his mountaintop hotel prison.
In January 1953, Skorzeny was seen in Cairo inspecting a parade that was celebrating
the Egyptian revolution of the previous year.
Skorzeny was rumoured to have supplied Nasser with not
only arms, but also German officers who were keen to
continue their war against the Jews. Could Heim have
been a part of that programme?
Although he was no weapons expert, it is perfectly feasible
that Nasser may have found some use for the well-educated
former SS officer.
In 1955, Nasser had welcomed the odious Johann von Leers,
a professor and Nazi propagandist whose speciality was
penning virulently anti-Semitic tracts.
Leers — who, like Heim, converted to Islam — worked in
the Egyptian Information Department and eventually became
head of the anti-Israel propaganda machine.
Leers was also rumoured to have played a role in helping
Nazis escape to Egypt. If this is true, then he may have
even helped Heim by providing him with the necessary
paperwork and employment.
So far, the Egyptian authorities have declined to discuss
Heim’s life in Cairo — doubtless aware of the controversy
any revelations would cause with its Israeli neighbour.
But why, in light of the wealth of fresh evidence, do
some suspect that Heim may still be alive and living
elsewhere?
The suspicions may, in part, be down to the sheer embarrassment
of the Simon Wiesenthal organisation who have devoted
years and considerable funds, without success, in the
attempt to trace their most wanted man.
Just seven months ago, the Wiesenthal Centre announced
fresh leads that Heim was in South America and that it
could reveal his hiding place ‘within a couple of weeks’.
Such publicity was a valuable
boost to the organisation’s profile in its continuing
role campaigning against anti-Semitism.
Alas, it appears that its intelligence was flawed. Far
from living in constant fear of detection in South America,
it seems almost certain ‘Dr Death’ lived out his days
in modest gentility in the Egyptian capital.
Uncomfortable though it may be to admit, especially for
those who have nobly devoted their lives to tracking
down the perpetrators of the Holocaust, there are many
who will never be held to accountable for their despicable
crimes.
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