Nazi hunter says Eichmann’s ‘best man’ sent 128,000 Jews to camps, then advised Assad regime on SS torture methods.

The world’s most wanted Nazi criminal, Adolf Eichmann’s second-in-command, died four years ago in Syria at the age of 98, the Simon Weisenthal Center said Sunday, citing the testimony of a former German secret service agent deployed in the Middle East.

SS captain Alois Brunner, described by Eichmann as his “best man,” was responsible for the deportation of 128,500 Jews to the death camps. After the war in the 1950s, Brunner fled to Syria where he reportedly served as a government adviser to president Hafez Assad and is thought to have instructed the regime on torture tactics. He survived two Mossad assassination attempts, and went to his grave utterly “unrepentant,” according to Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff.

“We have received information from a former German secret service agent who had served in the Middle East who said that Brunner was dead and buried in Damascus,” Zuroff told The Sunday Express on Sunday.

“Given his age it would not be surprising and the information came from someone who we consider reliable.”

Due to the ongoing Syrian civil war, the precise location of Brunner’s grave remains uncertain.

Brunner managed to flee Germany due to an identity mix-up that saw fellow SS member Anton Brunner prosecuted and hanged for his crimes. In 1954, using a fake Red Cross passport, Brunner traveled to Rome and later Egypt, where he rented a room from a Jewish family. In 1985 he said they were “quite nice people, really.”

After arriving in Syria under the pseudonym of Dr. Georg Fischer, Brunner was said to serve as an adviser to Assad on torture methods, though the information has not been confirmed. The Syrian government shielded Brunner from the various extradition orders.

timesofisrael.com