Heim, Aribert, 1914-1992

Aribert Ferdinand Heim (28 June 1914 – 10 August 1992), also known as Dr. Death and Butcher of Mauthausen, was an Austrian Schutzstaffel (SS) doctor. During World War II, he served at the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in Mauthausen, killing and torturing inmates using various methods, such as the direct injection of toxic compounds into the hearts of his victims. After the war, Heim lived in Cairo, Egypt, under the alias of Tarek Farid Hussein after his conversion to Islam. In February 2009, after years of attempts to locate him, German television network ZDF had found Heim's passport and other documents in Cairo. It was then reported that Heim had died there on 10 August 1992 from complications of rectal cancer, according to testimony by his son Ruediger and lawyer. This information, though set forth by a German court, was questioned by Efraim Zuroff, a leading Nazi hunter of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Zuroff stated that on a visit to Puerto Montt, Chile, in July 2008, Heim's daughter told him that Heim had died in 1993 in Argentina. In 2012, a court in Baden-Baden confirmed again that Heim had died in 1992 in Egypt, based on new evidence provided by his family and lawyer. The Wiesenthal Center continued to dispute these findings, and Heim remained on the list of most-wanted Nazi war criminals until 2013.