Alois Brunner

(born 8 April 1912)

Is an Austrian Nazi war criminal. Brunner wasAdolf Eichmann's assistant, and Eichmann referred to Brunner as his "best man." As commander of the Drancy internment camp outside Paris from June 1943 to August 1944, Brunner is held responsible for sending some 140,000 European Jewsto the gas chambers. Nearly 24,000 of them were deported from the Drancy camp. He was condemned to death in absentia in France in 1954 for crimes against humanity. In 1961 and in 1980, Brunner lost an eye and the fingers of his left hand, respectively, as a result of letter bombs sent to him by Mossad.

In 2003, The Guardian described him as "the world's highest-ranking Nazi fugitive believed still alive." Brunner was last reported to be living in Syria, whose government rebuffed international efforts to locate or apprehend him.

Born in Nádkút, Vas, Austria-Hungary (now Rohrbrunn, Burgenland, Austria). He is the son of Joseph Brunner and Ann Kruise. Brunner was a trouble-shooter for the Schutzstaffel (SS) and held the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer (Captain) when he organized deportations to Nazi concentration camps from Vichy France and Slovakia. He was commander of a train of Jews deported from Vienna to Riga in February 1942. En route Brunner shot and killed the well-known financier Siegmund Bosel, who, although ill, had been hauled out of a Vienna hospital and placed on the train. According to historian Gertrude Schneider, who as a young girl was deported to Riga on the same train, but survived the Holocaust:

Alois Brunner chained Bosel, still in his pajamas, to the platform of the first car -- our car -- and berated him for having been a profiteer. The old man repeatedly asked for mercy; he was very ill, and it was bitterly cold. Finally Brunner wearied of the game and shot him. Afterward, he walked into the car and asked whether anyone had heard anything. After being assured that no one had, he seemed satisfied and left.

He was personally sent by Adolf Eichmann in 1944 to Slovakia to oversee the deportation of Jews. From early 1944 until January 1945, over one million Jews were transported to Auschwitz. Before being named commander of Drancy internment camp near Paris, Brunner deported 43,000 Jews from Vienna and 46,000 from Salonika. In the last days of the Third Reich he managed to deport another 13,500 from Slovakia.

After the war and escape to Syria

In an interview with the German magazine Bunte, in 1985, Brunner describes how he escaped capture by the Allies immediately after the Second World War. The identity of Brunner was apparently mixed up with that of another SS member, Anton Brunner, who was executed for war crimes, instead of Alois, who, like Josef Mengele, lacked the SS blood type tattoo, which prevented him from being detected in an Allied prison camp. Anton Brunner, who also worked in Vienna deporting Jews, was confused after the war with Alois Brunner, even by historians such as Gerald Reitlinger.

Claiming that he "received official documents under a false name from American authorities", Brunner professed he found work as a driver for the United States Army in the period after the war. It has been alleged that Brunner found a working relationship after WWII with theOrganisation Gehlen.

He then fled Germany only in 1954, on a fake Red Cross passport, first to Rome, then Egypt where he worked as a weapons dealer, and then to Syria, where he took the pseudonym of Dr. Georg Fischer. In Syria, he was allegedly hired as a "government advisor" — with some suggesting he was advising the Syrian dictatorship on torture and repression techniques, some dating from his time as an SS torturer. He also allegedly trained Kurdish rebels to operate against Turkey, and shipped arms to Algerian rebels during their war of independence withFrance. Syria has constantly refused entry to French investigators as well as to Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld who spent nearly 15 years bringing the case to court in France. Simon Wiesenthal tried unsuccessfully to trace Brunner's whereabouts.

In his 1980s interview by the German magazine Bunte, Brunner declared that his sole regret was not having murdered more Jews. In a 1987 telephone interview to the Chicago Sun Times, he stated: "The Jews deserved to die. They were garbage, I have no regrets. If I had the chance I would do it again…" He was reported to be living in Damascus under the alias of Dr. Georg Fischer. Although there were unconfirmed reports that Brunner may have died in 1996, he was reportedly sighted in 2001.

In 2011, the German news magazine Der Spiegel reported that the German intelligence service BND had destroyed its file on Brunner in the 1990s, and that remarks in remaining files contain conflicting statements as to whether Brunner had worked for the BND at some point.

Letter bombs

Brunner lost an eye and fingers on his left hand from letter bombs sent to him in 1961 and in 1980 by Israel's intelligence service, Mossad. In December 1999, rumours surfaced saying that he had died in 1996 and had been buried in a cemetery in Damascus. However, German journalists visiting Syria said Brunner was living at the Meridian Hotel in Damascus. According to The Guardian, he was last seen alive by reliable witnesses in 1992, and by journalists in 1996.

Convictions in absentia

Germany and other countries have unsuccessfully requested his extradition. He was twice sentenced to death in absentia in the 1950s; one of those convictions was in France in 1954. In August 1987 an Interpol "red notice" was issued for him. In 1995, German State prosecutors inCologne and Frankfurt posted a €333,000 reward for information leading to his arrest.

On 2 March 2001, he was found guilty in absentia by a French court for crimes against humanity, including the arrest and deportation of 345 orphans from the Paris region (which had not been judged in the earlier trials) and was sentenced to life imprisonment. According toSerge Klarsfeld, the trial was largely symbolic - an effort to honour the memories of victims such as Celestine Ajzykowicz (11 years old), Jean Bender (4 years old) and Alain Blumberg, a two-week-old baby kicked to death by an SS guard. Klarsfeld's own father, arrested in 1943, was reportedly one of Brunner's victims.

Recent attempts to locate

In 2004, for an episode titled "Hunting Nazis", the television series Unsolved History used facial recognition software to compare Alois Brunner's official SS photograph with a recent photo of "Georg Fischer", and came up with a match of 8.1 points out of 10, which they claimed was, despite the elapse of over 50 years in aging, equivalent to a match with 95% certainty. Brazilian police are said to be investigating whether a suspect living in the country under an assumed name is actually Alois Brunner. Dep.-Cmdr. Asher Ben-Artzi, the head of Israel's Interpol and Foreign Liaison Section, passed on a Brazilian request for Brunner's fingerprints to Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff, head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, but Zuroff could not find any.

In July 2007, the Austrian Justice Ministry declared that they would pay €50,000 for information leading to his arrest and extradition to Austria.

A self described "team of Israelis" who have "hunted down" Nazi war criminals all over the world list him as their second most wanted man, and since the first may have already died, he could very well be their most wanted Nazi war criminal, and if found alive by them, will be brought back to Israel to face charges of crimes against humanity, mass murder and membership of an illegal party. In March 2009, the Simon Wiesenthal Center admitted that the possibility of Brunner still being alive was "slim". Despite this reality, he resurfaced in media reports in 2011 as being one of the most wanted men globally whom many insist could still be alive….

Alois Brunner, Death: reports contested.

Please take a good look at these pictures. Alois Brunner is alive and well, living under the protection of the Syrian goverment.

During the Second World War, Herr Brunner sent more than a 140 000 to Nazi concentration camps. He was a key operative working for Adolf Eichmann, who was tasked by Heydrich to manage the logistics of the Jewish ghettos and deportations to extermination. It is believed that Brunner is lending his expertise to the Syrian government in exchange for protection.

In the 1980s, Brunner gave a couple of interviews (German magazine BUNTE & Chicago Sun Times). He expressed his thoughts and feelings regarding the Holocaust. First, he regretted not murdering more Jews. Then, “The Jews deserved to die. If I had the chance I would do it again.”

This bastard will (would) be 96 this year. That’s an awfully long life for someone who doesn’t deserve it.

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Drancy Internment Camp