Wanted Nazi War criminal Alois Brunner, known as the “butcher of Thessaloniki”, most likely died four years ago in Syria though this cannot forensically be proven by Nazi-hunger Efraim Zuroff.

The SS captain was accused of deporting more than 128,000 Jews to death camps in World War 2 and would be 102 years old if alive today. New evidence has come to light from a former German secret service agent who revealed that the Nazi was buried in an unknown location in Damascus four years ago.

To the end he was unrepentant for his crimes and his role in the implementation of Hitler’s “Final Solution” to murder Jews.

Brunner had been responsible for the deaths of 47,000 Jews in Austria, 44,000 in Greece, 23,500 in France and 14,000 in Slovakia. He sent these people to death camps where most were murdered and fled to Syria in the Fifties. He is believed to have served as an adviser to President Hafez al-Assad, especially in giving instructions on torture tactics.

Another Nazi fugitive Otto Ernst Remer said that he had visited Brunner several times in Syria and had at some point lived at 7 Rue Georges Haddad, Damascus, using the alias Georg Fischer and that he had been linked to various companies such as Otraco and Thameco. In 1980, Brunner is reported to have received a parcel blomb that blew off several of his fingers and blinded him in one eye.

In 1987, he gave a phone interview with Chicago Sun-Times where he said that “the Jews deserved to die. I have no regrets. If I had the chance I would do it again.” In 2001, he was symbolically tried and sentence in absentia to life in prison by a French court for the arrest of 345 orphans in Paris that he sent to Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen just weeks before the liberation of Paris. Only 61 of these survived.