An exporter using the name George Fisher, who was wounded today by the blast of a parcel post bomb in a Damascus post office, was identified as Alois Brunner, one of Adolf Eichmann’s top Gestapo aides in the slaughter of European Jewry during the war.
Brunner, whose name came up during the trial of Eichmann this summer, was known in Eichmann’s headquarters as “Brunner Number one,” to distinguish him from his brother, Anton, another Eichmann aide. Anton was tried for his war crimes by a court in Vienna and hanged.
During the Vienna trial, the prosecution stressed that both brothers were equally guilty and Alois Brunner was accused of sending 48,000 Vienna Jews to death camps. He was also charged with having supervised the liquidation of Jewish communities in Greece, France, Slovakia, Austria and Germany and the transport of those Jews to death camps. Dieter Wisliceny, another Eichmann aide, testified at the Nuremberg trials that Alois Brunner was one of the most cruel officials in Eichmann’s headquarters.
Reports received here following the close of the Eichmann trial last August indicated that Austrian police had renewed their search for Brunner who disappeared. Subsequent reports suggested that the missing Gestapo official had fled to Egypt and that after the Egyptian-Syrian unification into the United Arab Republic, he went to Damascus. There, as George Fisher, he reportedly helped to organize the Syrian intelligence service and then went into the export-import business. Most recently he was reported to be engaged in supplying arms to the Algerian rebels.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
