Alois Brunner
Alois Brunner Alois Brunner in 1940 Born (1912-04-08)8 April 1912 Nádkút, Vas, Austria-Hungary (now Rohrbrunn, Burgenland, Austria) Died c. 2010 (aged 97 or 98) Damascus, Syria (likely) Allegiance  Nazi Germany  Syria Years of service 1932–1945 Rank SS-Hauptsturmführer (Captain) Unit Schutzstaffel Commands held Drancy internment camp Battles/wars World War II Other work Advisor to the Syrian government; arms dealer in Egypt Alois Brunner (8 April 1912 – c. 2010) was an Austrian Schutzstaffel (SS) officer who worked as Adolf Eichmann's assistant. Eichmann referred to Brunner as his "best man." Brunner is held responsible for sending at least 140,000 European Jews to the gas chambers. He was commander of the Drancy internment camp outside Paris from June 1943 to August 1944, from which nearly 24,000 people were deported. He was condemned to death in absentia in France in 1954 for crimes against humanity. In 1961 and in 1980, Brunner lost, respectively, an eye and the fingers of his left hand, as a result of letter bombs sent to him by the Israeli Mossad. In 2003, British newspaper The Guardian described him as "the world's highest-ranking Nazi fugitive believed still alive." Brunner was last reported to be living in 2001 in Syria, whose government had long rebuffed international efforts to locate or apprehend him, but was presumed dead as of 2012. The government of Syria under Hafez el-Assad was close to extraditing Alois Brunner to East Germany, before this plan was halted by the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. Brunner lived in Syria for many years, and was reportedly given asylum, a generous salary and protection by the ruling Baath Party in exchange for his advice on effective torture and interrogation techniques used by the Germans in World War II. There were also allegations not that Brunner escaped with help from ODESSA, the shadowy semi-mythical organization that allegedly helped high-level Nazis escape after the war, but rather that he and other "serious Nazis war criminals had escaped with the help of the Vatican and United States government and went on to live relatively ordinary lives." He was also confirmed to have died around 2010 in Syria, aged 97 or 98. Partly due to the ongoing civil war in Syria, the exact date of his death and his place or burial are unknown at present.