Few of the Nazi war criminals who escaped prosecution after the war were the subject of so many rumors, stories and speculation as Aribert Heim. For decades, the former concentration camp doctor, who was called "Dr. Death" and the "Butcher of Mauthausen" for his brutality, had been one of the most sought after Nazis. The question of whether Heim was still alive kept police, judges, Nazi hunters and the media occupied for decades.
Three years ago, the first evidence of Heim's death emerged. Now that version of events has become official. On Friday, a district court in the German town of Baden-Baden declared Heim to be dead and ended legal proceedings against the suspected war criminal. The judges concluded that Heim died of cancer in Egypt in 1992.
Heim had topped the list of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's most-wanted Nazi war criminals. During World War II, Heim is believed to have murdered more than 300 people in a grizzly manner at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. Among other things, he had been charged with injecting gasoline into patients' bodies near their hearts and operating on people without anaesthesia.
After the war, Heim remained in Germany, working as a doctor at a gynaecological practice in Baden-Baden until 1962, when he went into hiding. In 1979, the public prosecutor's office in Baden-Baden pressed charges against Heim and issued an international arrest warrant.
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