Nazi war criminal Alois Brunner 'died in Syria squalor' Published duration 11 January 2017 Related Topics The Holocaust

image copyright AP image caption Brunner (pictured) was right-hand man to the Gestapo's 'technician of death' Adolf Eichmann

One of the world's most wanted Nazi war criminals died in 2001 aged 89 after spending more than a decade incarcerated in a dilapidated Damascus basement, a French magazine has said.

The Revue XXI magazine reported that Austrian-born SS commander Alois Brunner spent his last years living in squalid conditions.

It said he remained a fervent anti-Semite right up to his death.

Brunner is accused of deporting more than 128,000 Jews to death camps.

He was in charge of the Drancy internment camp outside Paris where Jews rounded up in France were held before being sent to the death camps. An estimated 345 children were among his victims.

Brunner is believed to have fled to Syria in the 1950s from West Germany, reportedly serving later as an adviser to the Syrian government on torture tactics before being shunned by the authorities.

'A monster'

image copyright AFP image caption Alois Brunner sent thousands of Jews to their deaths in Nazi camps

image copyright AFP image caption French lawyer Serge Klarsfeld - seen here during a press conference about Alois Brunner in 1985 - has welcomed news of the Nazi's death

The guard, identified only as Omar, said Brunner survived on meagre army rations in the last years of his life.

The magazine's findings have been welcomed by renowned Nazi-hunter Serge Klarsfeld.

"We are satisfied to learn that he lived badly rather than well," Mr Klarsfeld told the AFP news agency.

Brunner was removed in April 2014 from the Simon Wiesenthal Center's most wanted list, in a move signifying that it too considered him to be dead.

The SS commander played a key role in the implementation of Hitler's "Final Solution" to murder Jews and has been described by Nazi hunters as "a monster", responsible for sending 47,000 Jews in Austria, 44,000 in Greece, 23,500 in France and 14,000 in Slovakia to camps where most were murdered.

Alois Brunner

Was once described by Adolf Eichmann - the architect of the "Final Solution" - as one of his best men

Eichmann dispatched Brunner wherever he felt round-ups of Jews were proceeding too slowly

From June 1943 until the liberation of France, he sent thousands of Jews to their almost certain deaths

He waged a reign of terror on the French Riviera, hunting down Jews who had sought refuge in the relative safety of the Italian-occupied zone

It is widely believed that he lived under the false name of Georg Fischer while in Syria - and that successive regimes offered him protection

Syria has repeatedly denied harbouring him