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40
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1989
Will War Criminal Brunner
Lose His Syrian Safe Haven?
HELEN DAVIS
Special to The Jewish News
T
he net may finally be
closing around Alois
Brunner, the most
wanted Nazi war criminal
alive, who is alleged to have
sent some 130,000 Jews to
their deaths during World
War II.
The race is on to bring
Brunner, now aged 77, to
justice before he is allowed
to die peacefully in the bed of
his apartment in Damascus,
Syria, where he found refuge
more than 35 years ago.
Even if the Israeli intel-
ligence services were able to
pierce the Syrian security
shield and capture him — as
they captured his old boss,
Adolf Eichmann, in Argen-
tina in 1960 —Brunner has
let it be known that he will
not allow himself to be taken
alive.
In a rare interview with
the German magazine Bunte
four years ago, Brunner said
he was "ready to stand trial
before an international court
of justice and answer for my
actions."
"But Israel," he said, "will
never get me. I won't become
a second Eichmann. You
see," he added, pulling a
capsule from his pocket, "I
am prepared."
Brunner has good reason
to fear vengeance: At the
Nuremberg war crimes
trials following the war, he
was described as "a cold-
blooded killer and a
specialist in humiliation
before death."
He is remembered for hav-
ing worked in a Nazi torture
chamber in France, where
he flogged and terrorized his
defenseless victims with a
horse-whip made of leather
thongs and threaded with
iron wire, before executing
them.
He also is remembered for
terrorizing _his victims,
parading before them with
revolvers in each hand
before eventually firing
bullets at point-blank range
into their heads.
Like Eichmann, Brunner
was Austrian. Born on April
8, 1912, in the village of
Rohrbrunn, he attended a
police academy before mov-
ing to Germany and joining
the Nazi Party at the age of
19.
By 1938, he had in-
sinuated himself into the
ranks of the party hierarchy
in Munich and was one of
Eichmann's earliest
disciples and aides.
Brunner's greatest con-
tribution to Eichmann's
plans for the extermination
of the Jews was the idea of
making the unsuspecting
Jews — already terrorized
and intimated — accomplices
in their own destruction.
He proposed that instead
of employing large numbers
of SS officers to seek out and
round up Jews, he would
offer protection and the
promise of jobs at a non-
existent Jewish settlement
in Lublin, Poland, to select
. Jews and their families if
Brunner has not
been entirely safe
in his Syrian
redoubt and has
already tasted a
small measure of
retribution for his
war-time crimes.
they themselves would
register the Jewish popula-
tion of their towns and cities.
Eichmann, who described
Brunner as "the best man I
have," agreed to the plan
and Brunner, who would
come to be regarded as the
Nazi specialist in Jewish
deportations, enthusi-
astically set about the task
of organizing the "Jupo" —
Jewish police — from among
men made available by local
Jewish community leaders.
The luxury villa that
Brunner was given in Hietz-
ing, filled with lavish fur-
niture that had been looted
from his Jewish victims, was
a measure of the esteem in
which Brunner was held by
the architect of the 'Final
Solution.
Brunner's first operational
post was Vienna, where he
succeeded Eichmann as head
of the "deportation center"
in the Austrian capital.
From there, he was sent to
Berlin to uncover the few
remaining Jews.
In February 1942 Brunner
was posted to Salonika,
where his first act was to
seize 25 promiment Jews
from this ancient communi-
ty and threaten them with
death if they did not
organize their own ghetto.
Within a few weeks, some
50,000 Jews from Salonika
ghetto were on their way to
Auschwitz and Treblinka.
After working his
murderous magic in Greece,
he was sent to ferret out the
Jews of Paris, and from
there to the Riviera town of
Nice, where the occupying
Italians had shown a reluc-
tance to deport Jews under
their control. Brunner
quickly overcame local in-
hibitions by offering a
reward of 100 francs for
every Jew who was exposed.
From Nice, he was posted
to Slovakia; from there to
Hungary, and, finally, in
March 1945, he returned to
Vienna. By this time, the
Red Army was on the out-
skirts of the city and
Brunner made a quick deci-
sion.
He traveled to Prague,
discarded his SS uniform,
adopted a civilian identity,
changed his name (to Alois
Schmaldienst), acquired
forged documents and joined
a group of displaced Ger-
mans. Then he began mak-
ing plans to head for the
Middle East where, he
judged correctly, his creden-
tials would assure him of a
safe haven.
After escaping from
Europe, Brunner settled
first in Egypt, which was
home to a thriving Nazi
community, before moving
to Syrian capital • in 1954,
where he continues to live in
a four-room apartment at 7
rue Haddad, near the
Zenobia park, under the
alias of Dr. Georg Fischer.
French courts have twice
sentenced him to death in
absentia and both the Ger-
man and Austrian govern-
ments have pressured
Damascus to hand him over.
All requests for his extradi-
tion have been met by a wall
of Syrian silence.
Brunner, however, has not
been entirely safe in his
Syrian redoubt and has al-
ready tasted a small mea-
sure of retribution for his
war-time crimes.
In November 1961, he
went to the local post office
to collect a package. It ex-
ploded, killing two postal
clerks and blinding Brunner
in one eye. Almost 20 years
later, in July 1980, he was
the recipient of another
parcel bomb. This time he
lost all his fingers except the
thumb of his left hand.
The focus on Brunner has
been sharpened dramati-
cally following the publica-
tion of a book in London last
week, entitled Swastika
Over Paris: The Fate of the
French Jews.
•