Last Nazi flees to South America
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Your support makes all the difference.Alois Brunner, the most senior Nazi war criminal still at large, is believed to have joined former colleagues in South America after a dramatic flight from his long-term hideaway in Syria.
His precise whereabouts remain a mystery. But according to officials working with the Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal, Brunner was recently sighted in northern Argentina, close to the borders with Paraguay and Brazil, and is now being sought by Interpol.
The Wiesenthal centre's European director, Shimon Samuels, said he had been told by German authorities that a $250,000 reward might be posted within days for Brunner's capture.
In Brunner's native Austria, members of the opposition Green Party were yesterday pressing for a full inquiry into reports that the former SS officer had recently received a new passport from the Austrian embassy in Cairo. Although Foreign Ministry officials denied the reports, they said they were still investigating the matter.
Brunner, now 83, was the deputy to Adolf Eichmann, the man who oversaw the Holocaust. He is wanted in connection with the deaths of some 130,000 Jews and a variety of crimes against humanity, including abduction of children.
"He is the last of Eichmann's crew," said Mr Wiesenthal, who has spent 50 years tracking Nazi war criminals. He once described Brunner as "one of the most evil". "The case should not be forgotten," he added. Like many former senior SS officers, Brunner fled Europe after the war. While large numbers headed straight for South America, he was among those who settled in Arab countries. It is widely believed that in the early 1950s he was given refuge in Syria, where he appears to have helped set up local police and security services.
Despite repeated extradition requests from Austria, Germany and France, the Syrian authorities consistently denied any knowledge of Brunner - or of Georg Fischer, the name he assumed.
Two years ago, several Middle East publications reported that Brunner had died in Syria, but Mr Wiesenthal and other Nazi-hunters refused to believe that.
If it is confirmed that Brunner has fled to South America, he will be the latest - and possibly the last - in a long line of senior Nazi figures to hide away there. Among the others to choose that escape route, the most infamous was Josef Mengele, the "angel of death" at Auschwitz, believed to have died in Brazil in 1979.
Eager henchman, page 8
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