|
The net is closing in on Aribert Heim, a Nazi war
criminal who has been on the run for 45 years. Austria and
Germany
are offering rewards for information leading to the capture
of the man known as "Dr. Death."
Investigators are closing in on one of the last living top
Nazi war criminals, Aribert Heim -- also known as Dr. Death
for his gruesome medical experiments on concentration camp
inmates during World War II.
German investigators have stepped up their hunt for Heim
and are focusing their search on Austria and Spain and in
particular on his friends and relatives. The Austrian government
is also supporting the hunt, by making its first-ever offer
of a reward for finding Nazi war criminals.
Germany had already offered €130,000 ($177,000) for
information on the whereabouts of Heim, who would be 93 years
old today. An unnamed American businessman has said he will
match this sum.
The Austrian justice ministry announced earlier in July
that it was offering an additional €50,000 for any clues
that would help find Heim or Alois Brunner, a former SS officer
who the Austrian government has described as Adolf Eichmann's
right-hand man, helping him organize the deportation of Jews
to death camps. Vienna had been accused for decades of not
doing enough to prosecute Nazi war criminals.
Heim is believed to have killed more than 300 people at the
Mauthausen concentration camp in northern Austria by injecting
them in the heart with poison. He went into hiding in 1962.
Efraim Zuroff, director of the Jewish human rights organization
Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, told DER SPIEGEL he
believes Heim is still alive and is living in Europe or South
America. The Simon Wiesenthal Center has played a key role
in locating Nazi war criminals in recent decades.
spiegel.de
|
