Dr Efraim Zuroff, a tough cookie, is one of the last of the world's Nazi hunters. In the riveting opening episode of The Last Nazis, he was on the trail of the most elusive prize of all: Aribert Heim, aka "Dr Death".

Heim's soubriquet was well earned. After arriving at Mauthausen concentration camp as a 26-year-old medical school graduate, he murdered several hundred prisoners in six weeks.

He amputated their limbs and removed their organs, without anaesthetic. He injected poison into their hearts and timed their deaths.

Amazingly, the Americans arrested him twice but released him without charge. No one knows why.

Even more amazingly, until 1962 Heim practised under his own name in the German town of Baden-Baden, tending to the ailments of the rich and in the process becoming rich himself.

Zuroff realises he's racing against the clock; if Heim is alive, he'll be 94.

"Were in injury time now," he said. "I can't rule out the possibility that he's either dead or will die in his sleep."

Scar

Heim came to attention when a lawyer tried to claim a tax rebate on his behalf.

His bank accounts, containing €2m, were promptly frozen.

Zuroff believed Heim was being assisted by his ex-wife, his son and an illegitimate daughter living in Chile. A tip-off suggested that he had been seen there on three occasions.

A visit to the daughter's house backfired when hordes of reporters and TV camera crews turned up, but she contacted Zuroff two months later and told him, in a private meeting, that she'd never even met her father, let alone sheltered him.

Various informants claimed that an elderly, white-haired man with a scar on his cheek -- a description that would fit Heim perfectly -- had been sighted in Argentina and Cairo.

While Zuroff's manhunt had all the suspense of a thriller, the longer it went on the more you felt the trail would lead to a dead-end, or a dead Nazi.

In the meantime, Heim's son, who still lives at the family home in Innsbruck, gave an interview to a German magazine, claiming that his father died in Cairo 17 years earlier and should be officially declared dead -- which, of course, would free up the family fortune.

With no body to support the claim, Zuroff was unconvinced: "If Heim died 17 years ago, why didn't the kids take the money?"

The Egyptian authorities won't give Zuroff permission to follow up the Cairo lead. Under German law, meanwhile, the police can't even question Heim's son about his father's whereabouts.

Punishment

Yet another tip-off suggested Heim had been hiding out in his own house all these years.

"That would be the trick of tricks," said Zuroff, bitterly. He went to look at the Heim home and spotted a frail, white-haired old man on a walking cane outside the door. It turned out to be Heim's ex-wife's boyfriend, another doctor.

Angry and frustrated, Zuroff dug deep for consolation. "In the end, he was forced to run away from this place," he said. "Life on the run -- that's a punishment." Perhaps; but not enough.

herald.ie