By Wikipedia This article was published in The Jerusalem Report on May 2, 2010. To subscribe to The Jerusalem Report, click here. Gilbert Achcar left Lebanon in…
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Alois Brunner (born April 8, 1912, reports of death contested) is an Austrian Nazi war criminal. Brunner was Adolf Eichmann's assistant, and Eichmann referred to Brunner as his "best man. " As commander of the Drancy internment camp outside Paris from June 1943 to August 1944, Alois Brunner is held responsible for sending some 140,000 European Jews to the gas chambers. Nearly 24,000 of them were deported from the Drancy camp. He was condemned in absentia in France in 1954 to a life sentence for crimes against humanity. In 1961 and in 1980, Brunner lost an eye and the fingers of his left hand, respectively, as a result of letter bombs 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, where the government has so far rebuffed international efforts to locate or apprehend him.
