| Claims that Aribert Heim died in Egypt have brought renewed pressure on Germany
to step up its hunt for surviving war criminalsWho was Aribert
Heim?
Known as "the Butcher of Mauthausen" or "Dr Death", he was the most wanted of all surviving Nazi war criminals. Heim spent only
seven weeks at Mauthausen, the Austrian concentration
camp, but in that time murdered hundreds of inmates by
carrying out operations, often without anaesthetic, to
see what level of pain a human could endure before expiring.
Survivors claim he injected prisoners in the heart with
various liquids, including petrol, water and poisons,
and timed their deaths with a stopwatch to find the most
efficient method. On one occasion he is said to have
removed the skin of a tattooed prisoner to make seat
coverings for the camp commandant's flat.
How did he escape prosecution?
The US military authorities
held him for two and a half years after the War but,
despite his distinctive appearance (6ft 3in, with size
12 feet and a huge scar on his right cheek), wasn't sure
who he was. So while other Mauthausen doctors were tried
and hanged, Heim was released without trial. Settling
in a spa town near Frankfurt, he married, had three children
and practised as a gynaecologist. But in the 1950s the
Austrian authorities started an investigation, and in
1962 state prosecutors in Germany issued a warrant for
his arrest. Tipped off by Nazi sympathisers, Heim simply
climbed into his red Mercedes and sped away.
So what makes us think he's
now dead?
Last week his 53-year-old
son Rüdiger, who resides in Germany, claimed his father
died of cancer in 1992, having lived undetected for ten
years in a run-down hotel in Cairo, where he'd converted
to Islam and adopted the name Tarek Hussein Farid. And
Germany’s ZDF TV says it has found his passport in a
dust-caked suitcase handed over by the owners of the
hotel. But the claim was greeted with suspicion by the
Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Nazi-hunting organisation. "There's no body, no corpse, no DNA, no grave," says the centre's leading Nazi hunter, Efraim Zuroff. Moreover, as recently
as 2001 Heim's lawyer claimed a capital gains tax rebate
for his client on the grounds that Heim was living abroad.
The story could also be a way for Rüdiger to gain control
of his father's £1m investments, frozen by German authorities
in the 1970s.
Who else is still at large?
In 1947, the UN body Crowcass
(Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects)
drew up a list of all those wanted for war crimes committed
between September 1939 and May 1945: more than 60,000
names. And since the 1950s, some 6,500 have been caught.
They include chief architect of the Holocaust, Adolf
Eichmann (kidnapped in Argentina by Israeli secret agents,
convicted of war crimes in Israel and executed in 1962);
Klaus Barbie, the "Butcher of Lyon" (tracked down in South America and tried in France
in 1987); and Franz Stangl, commandant of Treblinka (sentenced to life imprisonment
in West Germany in 1970). Many of the remaining 60,000
were in their twenties in 1944-45, when the worst atrocities
were being committed, so would now be in their eighties.
Statistical analysis suggests some 5,000 are alive today.
They include Alois Brunner, Eichmann’s right-hand man,
now thought to be living in Syria.
How did so many get away?
In the chaotic aftermath of
the War, Nazi sympathisers established a series of escape
routes, known as "rat-lines", for war criminals fleeing Europe. One rat-line, the Odessa ("Organisation of Former SS-Members", made famous by Frederick Forsyth's The Odessa File) was run by Hitler's favourite
commando, Otto Skorzeny, who went on to advise Argentine
dictator Juan Perón about setting up a Fourth Reich in
Latin America. Another led through Rome, a favourite
destination for Nazi "pilgrims", where they were helped by a number of high-ranking Vatican officials. A notable
example was Austrian bishop Dr Alois Hudal, who felt
it his "duty" to prevent German fugitives from falling into Allied hands and made a secret
pact with the Italian police to take wanted Nazis (including
Eichmann, Stangl and Gustav Wagner, deputy commandant
of Sobibor) to selected churches and monasteries.
And where did the war criminals
go?
Many beneficiaries of Bishop
Hudal's charity ended up in Argentina, where Perón welcomed
them. In fact the Argentines also set up rat-lines of
their own through Scandinavia, Belgium and Switzerland.
Scores of unrepentant Nazis were given top jobs under
assumed names as technicians in the Argentine armed forces.
Meanwhile the Swiss government – for the sum of 200,000
Swiss francs per Nazi – helped others to fly on regular
scheduled flights to Brazil, no questions asked. (For
a higher fee, Swiss bankers quietly transferred vast
sums from Zurich to Brazilian banks.) Right-wing military
dictatorships in Paraguay, Chile and Uruguay were other
havens. News about Aribert Heim may also point to the
role played by anti-Israeli regimes in the Middle East,
notably Egypt and Syria, in giving sanctuary to war criminals.
What was done to stop escapes?
In the aftermath of the War,
Allied leaders were acutely aware that many war criminals
remained at large, but found it hard to follow up leads.
Many of the most notorious criminals, including Eichmann,
Josef Mengele and Heim, were in Allied custody for a
time but were released for lack of evidence and uncertainty
over who they were. The War Crimes Invest-igation Team,
formed in April 1945, had only 11 officers. But in recent
years, less savoury reasons for the Allies' failure to
prevent escapes have emerged; similar charges have been
levelled against the KGB. And today, the case of Aribert
Heim has put Germany under the spotlight. If his family
were well aware that Heim was living in Cairo, why was
it so hard for the German authorities to discover that
fact?
thefirstpost.co.uk
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