ALOIS BRUNNER , THE ESCAPED CRIMINAL OF NAZI BORN APRIL 8,1912 - DIED 2001 UNKNOWN DATE

ALOIS BRUNNER , 

THE ESCAPED CRIMINAL OF NAZI 

BORN APRIL 8,1912 - DIED 2001 

UNKNOWN DATE

இரண்டாம் உலகப்போரில் பல்லாயிரம் யூத படுகொலைக்கு காரணமான ALOIS BRUNNER கடைசி வரை பிடிபடாமல் சிரியாவில் 2001 இல் இறந்தார்

SS Colonel (Standartenführer) Hans Landa - a Nazi "Jew Hunter" who speaks four languages and takes his work seriously in occupied France - is played by Christoph Waltz. Is Hans Landa based on a real-life person?

Even if Quentin Tarantino was not influenced by historical events, a Nazi "Jew Hunter" named Alois Brunner comes to mind as a real-life "Hans Landa." Who was he?

Adolf Eichmann personally chose Brunner to implement Hitler's "Final Solution" in France. Operating on "orders directly from Berlin," the ruthless SS officer was brutally efficient.

What were his methods? In Vichy France and the Jews, by Michael Marrus and Robert Paxton, we learn that:

Brunner organized squads that prowled about the country [of France] making arrests. His forces included Gestapo, Feldgendarmeries, and miscellaneous French forces under German control...but never the French police...

...In the fall [of 1942], Brunner's squads...spread a "veritable panic" according to the prefect [of Savoie]. In September they were at work in the Alpes-Maritimes in "a real climate of terror." (Vichy France and the Jews, pages 330-31.)
We learn more about Brunner's methods (and what he thought of himself, as reflected in his SS application) from a Brunner-researcher, Mary Felstiner:

Brunner's SS colleagues remarked on his slight build, "hooked nose" and "kinky hair." They nicknamed him "Jew Suss," the foul protagonist of an anti-Semitic film...Brunner set out to eliminate from Europe everything he considered sub-male and counter-Aryan. (Felstiner, quoted in Reading Charlotte Salomon, ed. by Michael Steinberg and Monica Bohn-Duchen, pages 206-7.)
Where, in France, did Brunner conduct his operations?

He was a master deceiver. As commandant of Drancy, a huge transit camp outside Paris...he derived his power from disinformation. In Brunner's camp deportees guessed nothing of their fate. (Felstiner, in Reading Charlotte Salomon, pg 206)
Although many high-ranking Nazis were captured after the war, such was not the lot of Alois Brunner:

This murderer escaped. After 1945, a secret postwar network...obscured SS men, including Brunner. He [allegedly] worked for Syria from the 1950s on ... hiding his identity ... he'd personally dispatched 130,000 Jews. "All of them deserved to die," said Brunner in Damascus to a journalist [Günther Deschner, who published his article in Bunte, a West German magazine], as late as 1987; "I have no regrets and would do it again." (Felstiner, in Reading Charlotte Salomon, pg 207)
Brunner was never captured. An American documentary, from 2003, sheds some light on his criminal activities:

In March 2003, an American documentary film entitled Alois Brunner: The Last Nazi was released, reflecting widespread interest in the fate of a key war criminal who was never caught. His crimes had been brought before courts [including in France, during 2001, where he was convicted in absentia], but he had never personally appeared there. His entire postwar career was shrouded by fog and deception.

Born in 1912 in the Austrian Burgenland, Brunner joined the Nazi Party illegally in 1931 and joined the SS on October 10, 1939. From 1939 he served as Eichmann's secretary ... whose task it was to force Jews from the Reich. In this capacity he organized forced deportations of 47,000 Austrian Jews to ghettos and death camps.

Transferred to Salonika in March 1943, Brunner oversaw the deportation of 43,000 Jews from Greece in two months.

In June 1943 he took over the Drancy camp, the assembly point for Jews to be deported from France. In fourteen months he sent roughly 24,000 Jews to the East.

He also directed a special commando unit to arrest Jews in Nice and bring them to Drancy, and he paid French collaborators for each Jew arrested.

As late as July 1944, he organized a sweep for hidden Jewish children in France, which located and deported 250 minors as well as the last Jewish convoy from Paris on August 17, 1944.
Where did he spend his time after the war?

The best evidence suggested that Brunner was in Damascus. He was said to have suffered disfiguring wounds from a package bomb attack in September 1961, possibly sent by an Israeli intelligence agent. (Above series of quotes from U.S. intelligence and the Nazis, by Richard Breitman, excerpts from pages 159 - 162.)
In Sword of the Golem, a novel by Jeff Minde and Ken Tucker, Alois Brunner (using his alias Georg Fischer, as he allegedly had, in real life, during his sojourn in Syria) meets a young woman named Shoshona:

"Let us not waste time on irrelevancies," Brunner waved her off. "I must introduce myself. I am Herr Georg Fischer."

"You are Alois Brunner," Shoshona said flatly.

Brunner looked surprised for a moment... (Sword of the Golem, pages 80-81.)
As it happens, therefore, we have compelling evidence for a real Hans Landa, the SS "Jew Hunter" of "Inglourious Basterds." (This link takes you to the film's screenplay.)

In December of 2014, Dr. Efraim Zuroff (director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem) announced his belief that Brunner died in Syria during 2010. Nazi hunters have therefore stopped searching-for the world's most-wanted war criminal.

In reporting the news of Brunner's death, the BBC also summarizes some of his key activities:

"The Austrian-born SS chief was once described by Adolf Eichmann - the architect of the 'Final Solution' - as one of his best men."
"Eichmann dispatched Brunner wherever he felt round-ups of Jews were proceeding too slowly."
"From June 1943 until the liberation of France, he sent thousands of Jews to their almost certain deaths."
"He waged a reign of terror on the French Riviera, hunting down Jews who had sought refuge in the relative safety of the Italian occupied zone."
"It is widely believed that he fled to Syria in the 1950s - living under the false name of Georg Fischer - and that successive regimes offered him protection."
"Syria has repeatedly denied harbouring him."
Brunner's final resting place is apparently in a Damascus grave.

One of the world's most wanted Nazi war criminals died in 2001 aged 89 after spending more than a decade incarcerated in a dilapidated Damascus basement, a French magazine has said.

The Revue XXI magazine reported that Austrian-born SS commander Alois Brunner spent his last years living in squalid conditions.

It said he remained a fervent anti-Semite right up to his death.

Brunner is accused of deporting more than 128,000 Jews to death camps.

He was in charge of the Drancy internment camp outside Paris where Jews rounded up in France were held before being sent to the death camps. An estimated 345 children were among his victims.

For many years there has been uncertainty as to whether Brunner - born in 1912 - is still alive, although the chief investigator pursuing him told the BBC in 2014 that he believed Brunner died in 2010 in Damascus.

Brunner is believed to have fled to Syria in the 1950s from West Germany, reportedly serving later as an adviser to the Syrian government on torture tactics before being shunned by the authorities.

'A monster'
The latest investigation by the Revue XXI magazine (in French) quotes one of Brunner's guards as saying that he "suffered and cried a lot in his final years, [and] everyone heard him".

Alois Brunner sent thousands of Jews to their deaths in Nazi camps

French lawyer Serge Klarsfeld - seen here during a press conference about Alois Brunner in 1985 - has welcomed news of the Nazi's death
The guard, identified only as Omar, said Brunner survived on meagre army rations in the last years of his life.

The magazine's findings have been welcomed by renowned Nazi-hunter Serge Klarsfeld.

"We are satisfied to learn that he lived badly rather than well," Mr Klarsfeld told the AFP news agency.

Brunner was removed in April 2014 from the Simon Wiesenthal Center's most wanted list, in a move signifying that it too considered him to be dead.

The SS commander played a key role in the implementation of Hitler's "Final Solution" to murder Jews and has been described by Nazi hunters as "a monster", responsible for sending 47,000 Jews in Austria, 44,000 in Greece, 23,500 in France and 14,000 in Slovakia to camps where most were murdered.

Alois Brunner
Was once described by Adolf Eichmann - the architect of the "Final Solution" - as one of his best men
Eichmann dispatched Brunner wherever he felt round-ups of Jews were proceeding too slowly
From June 1943 until the liberation of France, he sent thousands of Jews to their almost certain deaths
He waged a reign of terror on the French Riviera, hunting down Jews who had sought refuge in the relative safety of the Italian-occupied zone
It is widely believed that he lived under the false name of Georg Fischer while in Syria - and that successive regimes offered him protection
Syria has repeatedly denied harbouring him

In 2001 he was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment by a court in France and is reported to have survived at least two Israeli intelligence assassination attempts while in Syria in 1961 and 1980.