Part biography, part engrossing true crime story, The Eternal Nazi is a fascinating look at the hunt for Nazi war criminals after World War II, focusing on Aribert Heim, a concentration camp doctor who was never brought to justice for his war crimes. Nicholas Kulish and Souad Mekhennet have written a detailed, methodical history that explains many of the motivations of those who helped to hide Heim for nearly 50 years--and of those who pursued him.
Aribert Heim was known to have murdered many Jews at Mauthausen by injecting gasoline straight into their hearts, but was released from U.S. custody in the chaos immediately following the war's end. He married a German woman and set up a successful gynecological practice in Baden Baden. For nearly 15 years, he lived a quiet life, until rising interest in finding war criminals led to the establishment of a new police bureau dedicated to Nazi hunting. Heim fled Germany, eventually landing in Cairo, and it wasn't until 2010 that the full story of Dr. Aribert Heim's life, and how he was able to evade capture for so long, became known to the world.
In telling Heim's story, The Eternal Nazi raises the question of why so many Nazi war criminals escaped justice, and even rise to power in the postwar West German government. Despite decades-long efforts to find Heim and others, detectives were underfunded and often unsuccessful. Heim's escape story is all too representative of the postwar stories of many former Nazis. --Jessica Howard, blogger at Quirky Bookworm