Aribert Heim

Aribert Heim (* 28th June 1914 in Bad Radkersburg, Austria) is an Austrian doctor and one of the world's most wanted Nazi war criminals. The German government is offering 150,000 pounds for information leading to his arrest. As an SS doctor in an concentration camp in Mauthausen, he is accused of killing many inmates through sadistic methods like direct injections of toxic compounds into the hearts of his victims without painkillers.

Related Topics:
28th June - 1914 - Bad Radkersburg - Austria - Mauthausen

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Heim was born the a son of a policeman and a housewife. He studied medicine and did his doctorate in Vienna before volunteering to join the Waffen-SS in the spring of 1940. In October 1941 he was sent into the KZ Mauthausen where he performed gruesome medical experimentation on prisoners. He was later sent to a SS field hospital in Vienna.

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On the March 15th 1945, he was captured by US soldiers and sent to a camp for prisoners of war. He was released under dubious circumstances and worked as a doctor at Baden-Baden until his disappearance in 1962. He had been tipped off by an informant that the Austrian police were investigating him for war crimes. Subsequently, he disappeared from view but there is still a worldwide arrest warrant for him, and it is believed that he is currently still alive, because German investigators together with the Simon Wiesenthal centre discovered Heim?s secret bank accounts in Berlin several years ago. They proved to hold ?1 million (£680,000) in cash and other assets.

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The fact that none of Heim?s 3 children ever claimed any of this money supports the view that he is probably still alive and in hiding. Tax records prove that as late as 2001, Heim asked the German authorities to refund capital gains tax levied on him because he was living abroad. He has reportedly hidden out in South America, Spain and the Balkans. Efraim Zuroff, Simon Wiesenthal's successor at the Wiesenthal centre has initiated an active search for his whereabouts.

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