"There seems to have been a cover-up of a disturbing post-war chapter of German
history," Wiesenthal Center's Zuroff tells 'Post'.
Approximately 580 microfilms contained in the file on Alois Brunner, one of the
most wanted Nazi war criminals, were destroyed by Germany’s
BND Federal Intelligence Service in the mid-1990s, Der Spiegel
reported last week.
The newsweekly cited a note from a BND employee suggesting in 1994 that the BND
“was to part with these documents,” and another memo in 1997
from the same official saying that the file had been “cleared.”
Brunner, who was Austrian, was Adolf Eichmann’s assistant, and Eichmann referred
to him as his “best man.”
Brunner was responsible for deporting more than 128,000 Jews from around Europe
to concentration camps during the Holocaust. He fled to Syria
after the war where it is believed he lived until at least
the late ’90s.
In 1961 and in 1980, Brunner lost
an eye and the fingers of his left hand, respectively, as
a result of letter bombs that some say were sent to him by
Mossad.
In 2003, The Guardian described him
as “the world’s highest-ranking Nazi fugitive believed still
alive.”
Brunner was last reported to be living
in Syria, whose government rebuffed international efforts
to locate or apprehend him.
According to the report, former senior
BND official Volker Foertsch said in a note written in 1997
that he knew that Brunner was a “former employee” and was
living in Damascus.
In 1953, Foertsch worked for the BND’s
predecessor service, the Gehlen Organization, which was set
up by the CIA in 1948 and employed former German army officers
for their knowledge of the Soviet Union.
Dr. Ephraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal
Center told The Jerusalem Post that the center had asked
last year to see the files of both Brunner and Aribert Heim,
an Austrian SS doctor who experimented on and tortured prisoners
at Mauthausen concentration camp and who also escaped arrest
after the war. The Wiesenthal Center was told last week that
it could view Brunner’s file but that there was no documentation
whatsoever on Heim.
“It is highly unlikely that there
is or was no file on Aribert Heim,” Zuroff told the Post.
“It is an absolute scandal. There seems to have been a cover-up
of a disturbing post-war chapter of German history, which
is why we asked the BND for the information in the first
place.”
According to Zuroff there are now
just five microfilms remaining from Brunner’s file, which
is apparently what the Wiesenthal Center was invited to view
by the BND.
In a statement to AFP, a spokesman
for the BND confirmed that the files had been destroyed in
the 1990s and said that more details would be published in
the coming months.
Moshe Kantor, president of the European
Jewish Congress, said that the incident was deeply disturbing
and should be investigated.
“Any attempted cover-up or destruction
of vital evidence relating to the whereabouts and actions
of Alois Brunner is a slap in the face for all those who
suffered at his hands,” Kantor said.
“All those responsible for the murder
of Jews and others during the Holocaust must be brought to
justice, regardless of age or other factors. We hope that
there will be a thorough investigation of this matter.”
Brunner was a member of the Central
Office for Jewish Emigration, founded by Holocaust architect
Adolf Eichmann in 1938. It became an agency for the deportation
of Jews to concentration camps.
According to Dr. Joel Zisenwine, head
of the Yad Vashem deportations database project, Brunner
oversaw the deportation of the majority of Jews from Vienna
by late 1942, and was also sent to Berlin and Salonika to
carry out the same task. In 1943, he was made commandant
of the Drancy interment camp outside Paris, through which
approximately 65,0000 Jews were deported to either Auschwitz-Birkenau
or Sobibor. Fewer than 2,000 survived.
He was personally sent by Eichmann
in 1944 to Slovakia to oversee the deportation of Jews.
“Brunner was a real devil,” said Robert
Wistrich, professor of European and Jewish history at the
Hebrew University. “He was one of Eichmann’s most efficient
hunters.
“In the 1950s, West Germany employed
many people who had served in the civil service, the judiciary
and at almost every level of society. There was no great
purge of former Nazi officials from the civil service,” said
Wistrich. He said that it wouldn’t be surprising if Brunner
had served in the German intelligence agency in the 1950s. jpost.com
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