Nazi doctor declared dead by court after years on run

Published on 22/09/2012 00:00

A COURT in Germany has declared dead a Nazi war criminal responsible for experiments on concentration camp inmates.

Dr Aribert Heim, who operated on his victims at the Mauthausen camp in Austria, vanished from Germany in 1962.

In recent times, he was at the top of the list of most wanted fugitive Nazi war criminals published by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Israel.

Now a court in his native Baden-Wuerttemberg has confirmed that he died under the alias Tarek Hussein Farid in Egypt in 1992 from cancer.

Variously known in his homeland as “Dr Death” and “the Butcher of Mauthausen”, Heim was responsible for the deaths of at least 300 people in Mauthausen, where he injected them with benzine and other chemicals to chart their body reactions.

His victims were also subjected to experiments without anaesthetics. In the confusion after Germany’s collapse in 1945, he continued practicing until 1962 when prosecutors finally took an interest in him.