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The Nazi Death Doctor of Al-Muski · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, I want you to picture this. It's Cairo nineteen
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: ninety two, the Almasqui district, and it's just it's chaos
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: in a beautiful way. You can almost smell the spices,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: the exhaust, you hear the haggling, the carts clattering. It's
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: just this incredible symphony of life.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Absolutely and right in the middle of all that, in
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: this small, unassuming place called the pension Quasar el Medina,
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: something very quiet is happening.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: A resident has passed away, an old man the neighborhood
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: knew and loved.
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  Speaker 2: They all called him Amterrek, Uncle Derek. He was, you know,
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  Speaker 2: this humble, deeply religious man, spoke several languages, but was
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: just a fixture of the community.
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  Speaker 1: A quiet end for a quiet man. Except it wasn't,
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  Speaker 1: because his last wishes included a very specific instruction.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, he told the staff to open an old leather
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  Speaker 2: satchel he kept in his closet.
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  Speaker 1: And what was inside it had nothing to do with
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Tarek Usin far Reed, the man They thought they knew.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: No, it was like opening a time capsule from a nightmare.
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  Speaker 2: There were German documents from the Nazi era, a multiple
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  Speaker 2: pasts with different names.
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  Speaker 1: Photos of a man who looked nothing like the old
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  Speaker 1: man who had just died, and letters letters connected to
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  Speaker 1: the absolute highest levels of the Third Reich.
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  Speaker 2: And this is where the story just completely explodes, because
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  Speaker 2: the identity in those papers was staggering.
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  Speaker 1: The kind pious uncle Taek from el Moski was doctor
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  Speaker 1: aibert Heim, the death.
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  Speaker 2: Doctor, one of the most wanted, most sadistic Nazi war
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  Speaker 2: criminals on the entire planet, a man who was supposed
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: to be a ghost.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: So for our deef dive today, we're going to dissect
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: how this happened. This isn't just about the horrific acts.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: It's about the sheer genius of the escape.
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  Speaker 2: It's about how someone could hide in plain sight for
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: thirty years, defying a global manhunt. It's an incredible story
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: of strategy and pure evil, and.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: That evil started early. Heim was born in Austria nineteen fourteen.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: He grew up steeped in that rising fascist ideology.
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  Speaker 2: And he didn't just drift into it. His commitment to Hitler,
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: to the Nazi Party was fervent. He joined them, we've
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: met formally very early on.
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  Speaker 1: It was his entire life. The source of point out
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  Speaker 1: that his focus was almost pathologically pure.
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  Speaker 2: Almost. There was one tiny deviation mentioned he married a
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: student who apparently disagreed with his politics.
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  Speaker 1: And that marriage didn't last.
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  Speaker 2: It did not. It's like he tried deviating from the
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: path once and decided never again. After that, it was
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: total commitment to the cause, which led.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: Him to medical school and then very briefly to treating soldiers.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: But that didn't interest him.
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  Speaker 2: No, compassion wasn't the goal. He quickly proposed what he
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: called his scientific research project.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Which from his point of view, was about benefiting humanity from.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: His monstrous point of view, yes, but his research subjects
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: weren't volunteers. They were detainees in Nazi prisons.
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  Speaker 1: He had unlimited access to human bodies.
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  Speaker 2: And zero accountability. His goal was purely to see what
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: would happen to catalog in real time, how the human
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: body reacts to extreme external trauma, and.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: The specifics of that trauma are what earned him his name,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: the death doctor. We're talking about surgeries with no.
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  Speaker 2: Anesthetic, none whatsoever. The entire point was to find out
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: the maximum threshold for pain. How much can a human
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: being indoor before they simply collapse.
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  Speaker 1: It's just it's unimaginable.
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  Speaker 2: But maybe the most clinically horrifying part was how he
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  Speaker 2: used poisons. A normal scientist would inject into the bloodstream
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: to see the.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: Effects, right right, the systemic effects.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: He wasn't interested in that. He would inject substances air, water, toxins,
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  Speaker 2: it didn't matter, directly into his victim's vital organ, directly
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: into the heart, straight into the heart, so he could
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  Speaker 2: watch with a stopwatch exactly how long it took for
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  Speaker 2: the organ to fail and for the person to die.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: This wasn't science, it was something else. It speaks to
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: this deep psychological instability, this grandiosity.
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  Speaker 2: Absolutely, and you see it in the the.
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  Speaker 1: Trophies he kept, the souvenirs.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, he once beheaded a prisoner, apparently a very intelligent man,
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  Speaker 2: just because he wanted to quote preserve the head he kept.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: And there was a human skull he kept because he
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: admired the man's teeth.
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  Speaker 2: The dental structure. Yes, and of course the most infamous one, he.
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  Speaker 1: Made a lampshade made from human skin and then.
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  Speaker 2: Gifted it to a colleague. This wasn't something hidden in
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  Speaker 2: a lab. This was his personality. This cruelty was part
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: of his daily life. He felt completely untouchable.
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  Speaker 1: And that same meticulous, horrific efficiency is exactly what he
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  Speaker 1: used to escape.
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  Speaker 2: It is after the war. He's captured. He's put on
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  Speaker 2: trial with other war criminals, supervised by the US government, and.
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  Speaker 1: The verdict is stunning.
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  Speaker 2: He's released released insufficient evidence, which just sounds impossible.
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  Speaker 1: How how is there insufficient evidence?
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  Speaker 2: This is the first real sign of his operational genius.
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  Speaker 2: He knew this day was coming long before his capture.
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  Speaker 2: He must have systematically destroyed every single piece of incriminating evidence.
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  Speaker 1: Every photo, every document.
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  Speaker 2: Anything that could physically tie him to those specific experiments.
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  Speaker 2: He knew the post war legalsism was chaotic and depended
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: on tangible.
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  Speaker 1: Proof, and he made sure there was none.
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  Speaker 2: He literally erased himself from his own crimes.
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  Speaker 1: So they let him go and he just walks back
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  Speaker 1: into German society.
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  Speaker 2: He opens a clinic, a clinic for obstetrics and gynecology
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  Speaker 2: of all things. I mean, the camouflage is brilliant. He's
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  Speaker 2: a healer, a bringer of new life.
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  Speaker 1: While maintaining these secret connections, just.
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  Speaker 2: Waiting right because he knew the haunt wasn't really over,
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  Speaker 2: And the clock finally ran out for him In nineteen
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  Speaker 2: sixty two, what happened? He gets a tip dangerous intelligence.
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  Speaker 2: Jewish organizations have compiled near evidence and he is on
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  Speaker 2: a list, a list for retrial or assassination. He realized
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  Speaker 2: he couldn't rely on the legal system anymore. He had
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: to disappear for good, and just.
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  Speaker 1: Like that, he was gone. Nineteen sixty two is the
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  Speaker 1: start of this thirty year ghost story, and.
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  Speaker 2: His flight path is just a masterclass in evasion. He
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  Speaker 2: goes briefly to South America, then to Spain under an alias, and.
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  Speaker 1: These weren't cheap disguises. We're talking a high quality forged documents, top.
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  Speaker 2: Tier, good enough to get him across multiple borders, from
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  Speaker 2: Spain to Morocco, then to Libya, always one step ahead.
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  Speaker 1: And finally he lands in Cairo, which seems like a
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  Speaker 1: very deliberate choice.
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  Speaker 2: A highly strategic choice. Egypt in sixty two was non aligned.
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  Speaker 2: It wasn't a place where say, Massad could operate with
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  Speaker 2: impunity like they could in South America. It offered a
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  Speaker 2: different kind of anonymity.
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  Speaker 1: So he arives the authorities have no alert for the
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: death doctor, and Rberheim ceases to.
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  Speaker 2: Exist and M Tarek, the humble neighbor is.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: Born, and again his choice of location is just genius.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: He doesn't hide out in some wealthy, isolated compound. He
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  Speaker 1: goes to the working class Almoski.
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  Speaker 2: District, hiding in plain sight in the middle of the masses.
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  Speaker 2: He moves into the pension in Kuaser Almadina, befriends the
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  Speaker 2: owner and just integrates.
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  Speaker 1: People were impressed by him. His language is his humility.
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  Speaker 2: And his genuine affection for the country. It seems like
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: it wasn't an act. That humility, that kindness. It earned
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: him their trust and eventually that nickname Uncle Turek.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: And living there, surrounded by mosques, embraced by the community,
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  Speaker 1: he turns to Islam.
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  Speaker 2: His neighbors brought him Islamic techs, but in German, they
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  Speaker 2: helped him study and eventually he converts. He takes the
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: name Terrek Hussein Ferid, which.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: Brings us to the central contradiction of his entire life.
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  Speaker 1: Right was this real?
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  Speaker 2: Was it the ultimate performance? Or was it a genuine conviction?
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  Speaker 1: And by all accounts, for the people who were there,
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  Speaker 1: it seems like it was real. They'd see him praying,
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  Speaker 1: reading the Koran with this incredible focus, even when he
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: thought no one was watching.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: And that's the story, and it's compelling. But you have
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: to push back a little, don't you.
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  Speaker 1: What do you mean?
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  Speaker 2: I mean, for a man with his level of psychological discipline,
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  Speaker 2: his ability to create a completely new identity, the line
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  Speaker 2: between performance and reality gets incredibly thin.
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  Speaker 1: So you're saying, maybe he so fully became m Trek
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  Speaker 1: that it felt real even to him.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly is that a sincere conversion or is it the
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  Speaker 2: most perfect, most protective form of identity theft of Fujis
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: could ever hope to achieve. It provides this impenetrable social
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  Speaker 2: and emotional wall around him.
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  Speaker 1: It's a chilling thought, his ability to just shed his
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: own past. He got cancer in the seventies, and his
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: neighbors all said he faced it with his deep faith,
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: his acceptance of God's will.
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  Speaker 2: He died in nineteen ninety two. Private to the very end.
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  Speaker 2: He famously refused to be photographed. That one single photo
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  Speaker 2: we have of him in Cairo is incredibly.
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  Speaker 1: Rare, And in death he leaves one final bizarre twist.
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  Speaker 2: His last request two parts to be buried in a
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  Speaker 2: simple charity cemetery.
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  Speaker 1: And to donate his body to scientific research of all things.
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  Speaker 1: The world didn't find out any of this until his
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  Speaker 1: son back in Germany made the announcement. My father, Herbert
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  Speaker 1: Eim died in Egypt. He was living as Taak Hussain.
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  Speaker 2: Farid, and of course nobody believed it. International Jewish centers
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  Speaker 2: were convinced it was a trick that he was still
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: alive somewhere.
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  Speaker 1: They needed proof, irrefutable.
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  Speaker 2: Proof, which they eventually got from a tooth provided by
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: his local dentist there in El Moski. DNA confirmed it.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: The death Doctor was dead.
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  Speaker 1: Thirty years too late for justice. Yeah, But for the
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  Speaker 1: people who knew him in Cairo, the story never really
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  Speaker 1: added up.
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  Speaker 2: No, the cognitive dissonance was just too much. Even after
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: it was confirmed he was this monster, many just refused
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  Speaker 2: to believe it. The only remember the kind man, the
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: man who was so loving toward their children.
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  Speaker 1: He really did it. He convinced an entire community of
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  Speaker 1: his goodness.
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  Speaker 2: He achieved something unique. He managed to convince the world
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  Speaker 2: he wasn't there at all, and convinced his community he
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  Speaker 2: was fully present. It's a masterclass in deception.
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  Speaker 1: So we start this dive talking about a man who
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  Speaker 1: perverted science who used human bodies for the most grotesque
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  Speaker 1: experiments imaginable.
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  Speaker 2: And we end with that same man, as his final
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  Speaker 2: act on Earth, donating his own body back to the
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  Speaker 2: very science that he desecraated.
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  Speaker 1: It leaves you with this one last impossible.
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  Speaker 2: Question, after decades as the pious am Taric, what did
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  Speaker 2: that last request really mean? Was it a final, genuine
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  Speaker 2: act of penance, a desperate attempt by the man he
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: had become to atone for the sins of the man
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: he once was?
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  Speaker 1: Or was it something darker?
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  Speaker 2: Was it one last, cold, calculating act from doctor him,
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: the death Doctor's final experiment, controlling the narrative even from
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: beyond the grave. That's the contradiction you're left to figure out.