Most wanted Nazi almost certainly died in Syria: Nazi hunting group

A Nazi war criminal who topped most wanted lists over the Holocaust is “almost certain” to have died in Syria four years ago, a Nazi-hunting group said yesterday.

“I am almost certain that he´s no longer alive,” Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre´s Jerusalem office, told the media.

Zuroff said that according to a German intelligence officer, Alois Brunner “died four years ago in… Damascus,” where he had fled seeking refuge decades ago.

He stressed that the Wiesenthal Centre “could not confirm the information” for certain. Still, given the 1912 birth year of Brunner, the unrepentant “right-hand man” of leading Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann, he was in any case unlikely to be alive.

Brunner topped the Simon Wiesenthal list of wanted Nazis for deporting tens of thousands of Jews to death camps during World War II, although he was removed this year due to his age and almost certain death, Zuroff said.

After the war Brunner escaped detection by taking on a false identity and worked for two years for the US occupying forces in Germany, before fleeing to Egypt in 1954 and from there to Syria, where successive regimes protected him.

He was pursued by Nazi hunters and survived assassination attempts allegedly by Israel´s secret intelligence service, the Mossad.

“He was responsible for the deportation to the death camps of 128,500 Jews,” Zuroff said — including 47,000 from Austria, 44,000 from Greece, 23,500 from France and 14,000 from Slovakia.

“He was a fanatic anti-Semite, and a person who was dedicated to the mass-murder of European Jewry.”

He was known for wearing gloves so that his hands would not touch Jewish flesh and was also praised by Adolf Eichmann as “one of my best men.”