Fugitive Nazi War Crimes Suspect Willing to Stand Trial, German Magazine Says

An unrepentant ex-Nazi SS officer wanted for war crimes, who has been living in Syria for three decades, has said he is willing to surrender and stand trial, providing he is not turned over to the Israelis, the West German magazine Bunte reported Monday.

The magazine said it interviewed former SS Capt. Alois Brunner, now 73, considered the most notorious Nazi war crimes suspect still at large, in Damascus, the Syrian capital. He was located in an upper-class neighborhood living under the name Dr. Georg Fisher and masquerading as a German businessman, the magazine said.

He is wanted by West Germany, France, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Greece and Israel for sending more than 120,000 Jews to their deaths in Hitler’s gas chambers.

Throughout the war, Brunner organized the transportation of Jews to extermination camps under the direction of Adolf Eichmann, who reportedly once said of his aide, “He was my best man.”

Eichmann was kidnaped by an Israeli commando squad in Buenos Aires in 1960, put on trial in Israel and executed in 1962.

Brunner, depicted as a balding, gaunt and feeble figure with deformed hands and other scars from assassination attempts by the Israelis, appeared to feel no remorse for his crimes, the magazine said.

‘I Was Responsible’

“Yes, I was responsible for the transportation,” Brunner reportedly told Bunte reporters. “It was my task to bring the Jews out of (their) countries. . . . But I have no bad conscience about it.”

Brunner typed a synopsis of his views for the magazine saying, “The Communist East is bad, the capitalist West is much worse. Jews, with their Christian and Islamic sects, are the crowning achievement of the devil.”

Despite his unrepentance, Brunner, according to the magazine, told their reporters: “I want to tell you on the record: I am willing to go to an international court. Only Israel will never get me. I won’t become a second Eichmann.”

Brunner reportedly took a pill from his shirt pocket and said, “I am prepared.” The impression he left was that it was a poison capsule of the sort taken by Nazi overlord Hermann Goering to cheat the hangman at Nuremberg.

Among the Nazi concentration camps that received Jews sent by Brunner was Auschwitz, where Dr. Josef Mengele supervised the killing of prisoners and carried out gruesome experiments on inmates.

Mengele’s Death Questioned

Mengele managed to elude investigators from various countries until his reported death in Brazil five years ago. However, Israelis authorities have questioned whether the bones unearthed there were actually those of Mengele. West German authorities are still investigating the medical documents from Brazil.

After Mengele’s apparent death, Brunner became the most-wanted war crimes suspect.

Alfred Streim of the Central Office for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes in Ludwigsburg said, “Despite his relatively low rank in the SS, he is probably the most incriminated Nazi still alive.”

West Germany learned of Brunner’s whereabouts in Syria and asked for extradition, but according to officials in Bonn, there was no reply.

In Vienna, Nazi investigator Simon Wiesenthal described Brunner’s offer to go before an international court as “rhetoric and a ruse.” Wiesenthal, who has tracked down hundreds of wanted Nazi criminals, said that Brunner is one of two top Eichmann aides still at large. The other is living in West Germany under a false name.

Born in Austria

Wiesenthal, who founded the Jewish Documentation Center in Vienna, said Brunner was born in Austria but became a German citizen before Hitler annexed Austria in 1938. He said that Austria, too, has tried to extradite Brunner from Syria but the request was ignored.

Bunte said that Brunner was guarded by Syrian soldiers and was always accompanied by them when he left his apartment in Damascus.

The Israelis have known that Brunner was living in Damascus, the magazine said, and have twice tried to kill him with postal bombs.

The first bomb exploded on Sept. 13, 1961, when Brunner opened a parcel at the main post office in Damascus. Two postmen died, and Brunner lost an eye, Bunte said.

The second attempt came 20 years later on July 1, 1980, when Brunner opened a package from Austria which exploded, damaging both his hands.

Worked for U.S. Army

He told Bunte that he ended the war in Czechoslovakia as a German prisoner of war held by the Americans. He escaped detection as a war criminal by giving his captors a false name.

Like Mengele, he had no tell-tale SS tattoo. So he worked as a driver for a U.S. Army engineer unit, which released him with identity papers under an assumed name, Alois Schmaldienst.

Though he was on the wanted list issued by the Austrian government, he later traveled to the Austrian city of Graz to see his wife and daughter. But the region was then under the control of British troops, and he was held again as a POW. In 1946, he was released.

Brunner said he worked as a farm laborer for a few months before returning to Munich, where he was employed as a driver, again by the U.S. Army.

He then became worried, he said, that U.S. authorities would discover his activities in the black-market, so he went to Hamburg, then Essen, where he worked first as a coal miner and then as a waiter.

He said he also worried that the authorities might discover his real identity, and because he knew that some Nazis had managed to settle in Egypt, he made his way there, and from Egypt to Syria in 1954. He did not disclose how he came under the official protection of the Syrian government.

In June, 1982, Paris lawyer Serge Klarsfeld, who is active in tracing Nazi war criminals, flew to Damascus to bring evidence against Brunner to Syrian authorities, but he was not allowed out of Damascus airport because he did not hold a valid visa.