Alois Brunner Alois Brunner ( born 8 April 1912 ) was a German Schutzstaffel ( SS ) officer . Brunner is wanted for war crimes , and was Adolf Eichmann ' s assistant . Eichmann referred to Brunner as his " best man " . Brunner is held responsible for sending at least 140 , 000 European Jews to the gas chambers . He was commander of the Drancy internment camp outside Paris from June 1943 to August 1944 , from which nearly 24 , 000 people were deported . He was condemned to death " in absentia " in France in 1954 for crimes against humanity . In 1961 and in 1980 , Brunner lost , respectively , an eye and the fingers of his left hand , as a result of letter bomb s sent to him by the Israeli 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 had long rebuffed international efforts to locate or apprehend him . The government of Syria under Hafez el - Assad was close to extraditing Alois Brunner to East Germany , before this plan was halted by the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 . Until 1945 . Born in Nádkút , Vas , Austria - Hungary ( now Rohrbrunn , Burgenland , Austria ) . He is the son of Joseph Brunner and Ann Kruise . Brunner was a trouble - shooter for the Schutzstaffel ( SS ) and held the rank of SS - Hauptsturmführer ( Captain ) when he organized deportations to Nazi concentration camps from Vichy France and Slovakia . He was commander of a train of Jews deported from Vienna to Riga in February 1942 . En route , Brunner shot and killed the well - known financier , who , although ill , had been hauled out of a Vienna hospital and placed on the train . According to historian Gertrude Schneider , who as a young girl was deported to Riga on the same train , but survived the Holocaust : He was personally sent by Adolf Eichmann in 1944 to Slovakia to oversee the deportation of Jews . From early 1944 until January 1945 , over one million Jews were transported to Auschwitz . Before being named commander of Drancy internment camp near Paris , Brunner deported 43 , 000 Jews from Vienna and 46 , 000 from Salonika . In the last days of the Third Reich he managed to deport another 13 , 500 from Slovakia . After the war and escape to Syria . In an interview with the German magazine " Bunte " , in 1985 , Brunner describes how he escaped capture by the Allies immediately after World War II . The identity of Brunner was apparently mixed up with that of another SS member , Anton Brunner , who was executed for war crimes , instead of Alois , who , like Josef Mengele , lacked the SS blood type tattoo , which prevented him from being detected in an Allied prison camp . Anton Brunner , who also worked in Vienna deporting Jews , was confused after the war with Alois Brunner , even by historians such as Gerald Reitlinger . Claiming that he " received official documents under a false name from American authorities " , Brunner professed he found work as a driver for the United States Army in the period after the war . It has been alleged that Brunner found a working relationship after World War II with the " Gehlen Organization " . He then fled Germany only in 1954 , on a fake Red Cross passport , first to Rome , then Egypt , where he worked as a weapons dealer , and then to Syria , where he took the pseudonym of Dr . Georg Fischer . In Syria , he was allegedly hired as a " government advisor " . The exact nature of his work is unknown , but it is believed he advised the Syrian dictatorship on torture and repression techniques , some dating from his time as an SS torturer . Syria had long refused entry to French investigators as well as to Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld who spent nearly 15 years bringing the case to court in France . Simon Wiesenthal tried unsuccessfully to trace Brunner ' s whereabouts . However , communist East Germany led by Erich Honecker negotiated with Syria in the late 1980s to have Alois Brunner extradited and arrested in Berlin . The government of Syria under Hafez el - Assad was close to extraditing Brunner to East Germany , but the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 severed contacts between the two regimes and halted the extradition plan . In his 1980s interview by the German magazine " Bunte " , Brunner declared that his sole regret was not having murdered more Jews . In a 1987 telephone interview to the " Chicago Sun Times " , he stated in front of a witness : " " All of [ the Jews ] deserved to die because they were the Devil ' s agents and human garbage . I have no regrets and would do it again . " " He was reported to be living in Damascus under the alias of Dr . Georg Fischer . Up to the early 1990s , he lived in an apartment building on 7 Rue Haddad in Damascus , meeting with foreigners and occasionally being photographed . In the 1990s , the French Embassy received reports that Brunner was meeting regularly and having tea with former East German nationals . According to " The Guardian " , he was last seen alive by reliable witnesses in 1992 . In December 1999 , unconfirmed reports surfaced , stating that Brunner had died in 1996 , and had been buried in a Damascus cemetery . However , he was reportedly sighted at the Meridian Hotel in Damascus by German journalists that same year , where he was said to be living under police protection . The last reported sighting of him was at the Meridian Hotel in late 2001 by German journalists . In 2011 , the German news magazine Der Spiegel reported that the German intelligence service Bundesnachrichtendienst had destroyed its file on Brunner in the 1990s , and that remarks in remaining files contain conflicting statements as to whether Brunner had worked for the BND at some point . Letter bombs . Israel ' s intelligence service , the Mossad , had tried to assassinate Alois Brunner , but failed . In 1961 , the Mossad sent a bomb package to Brunner . Two Damascus postal workers were killed , but Brunner was only injured . Brunner lost an eye and fingers on his left hand from letter bomb s sent to him in 1961 and in 1980 by the Mossad . Convictions in absentia . Germany and other countries have unsuccessfully requested his extradition . He was twice sentenced to death " in absentia " in the 1950s ; one of those convictions was in France in 1954 . In August 1987 an Interpol " red notice " was issued for him . In 1995 , German State prosecutors in Cologne and Frankfurt posted a €333 , 000 reward for information leading to his arrest . On 2 March 2001 , he was found guilty " in absentia " by a French court for crimes against humanity , including the arrest and deportation of 345 orphans from the Paris region ( which had not been judged in the earlier trials ) and was sentenced to life imprisonment . According to Serge Klarsfeld , the trial was largely symbolic — an effort to honour the memories of victims . Klarsfeld ' s own father , arrested in 1943 , was reportedly one of Brunner ' s victims . Recent attempts to locate . In 2004 , for an episode titled " Hunting Nazis " , the television series " Unsolved History " used facial recognition software to compare Alois Brunner ' s official SS photograph with a recent photo of " Georg Fischer " , and came up with a match of 8 . 1 points out of 10 , which they claimed was , despite the elapse of over 50 years in aging , equivalent to a match with 95 % certainty . Brazilian police are said to be investigating whether a suspect living in the country under an assumed name is actually Alois Brunner . Deputy Commander Asher Ben - Artzi , the head of Israel ' s Interpol and Foreign Liaison Section , passed on a Brazilian request for Brunner ' s fingerprint s to Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff , head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem , but Zuroff could not find any . In July 2007 , the Austrian Justice Ministry declared that they would pay €50 , 000 for information leading to his arrest and extradition to Austria . In March 2009 , the Simon Wiesenthal Center admitted that the possibility of Brunner still being alive was " slim " . Despite this reality , he resurfaced in media reports in 2011 as being one of the most wanted men globally who many insist could still be alive .