NEWS

Nazi war criminal Brunner ‘died in Syria,’ pursuer says

Alois Brunner, one of the world’s most wanted Nazi war criminals responsible for sending tens of thousands of Jews including 44,000 Greeks to death camps, died four years ago in Syria, it has emerged.

According to Efraim Zuroff, the chief investigator pursuing Brunner and director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, Brunner died near Damascus in 2010. According to Zuroff, a German intelligence official informed the Wiesenthal Center about four years ago that Brunner had died of natural causes but officials were not able to confirm his death forensically due to the Syrian civil war. Zuroff told the BBC he was “99 percent sure” Brunner, who would be 102 today, is dead.

The right-hand man to Adolf Eichmann, a key organizer of the Holocaust, Brunner is said to have sent more than 128,000 Jews to Nazi death camps – 47,000 from Austria, 44,000 from Greece, 23,500 from France and 14,000 from Slovakia.

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