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Morris Heisel is a character of Apt Pupil, an elderly Jew and a minor character introduced late in the story but a crucial one: he is the man who correctly identifies Arthur Denker as Kurt Dussander, the SS commandant of the Nazi concentration camp where Heisel was interred during the waning days of World War II.
Heisel's family—his first wife and daughter—died in the gas chambers of Patin upon their arrival. Heisel himself was put to forced labor in the camp and suffered torture at the hands of Dussander and the SS in the camp. Sometime after the end of the war, Heisel remarried and lived with his second wife in Los Angeles.
While trying to install a new TV antenna on his roof—and over the protests of his wife—Heisel fell on his driveway, breaking a vertebrae in his back, leaving him paralyzed. During his stay in the hospital, he shares a room with Dussander, a heart-attack patient who is still going by his alias of Arthur Denker. Heisel initially cannot place Dussander, who looks vaguely familiar. He eventually pieces together who Denker is when the man lets slip a line he'd use often when interrogating prisoners at Patin. Heisel wakes up terrified in the night, finally remembering Dussander.
Before he's released Heisel discovers he may be regaining the use of his legs. He considers it and his recognition of the fugitive Nazi miraculous. Heisel contacts the proper authorties, who send a man named Weiskopf to investigate. Subsequently, Dussander commits suicide with an overdose of Seconal pills rather than be deported to Israel to answer for his crimes.