Alois Brunner

Alois Brunner (* 8 April 1912 in Nádkút, Vas County, Hungary, Austria-Hungary, now Rohrbrunn, Burgenland, Austria; † 2001, 2009 or 2010 in Damascus, Syria) was an SS Hauptsturmführer. He was one of Adolf Eichmann's most important collaborators in the extermination of European Jews, in Nazi jargon the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question". As head of SS Sonderkommandos set up for this purpose, Brunner was jointly responsible for the deportation of 128,500 Jews from Vienna, Berlin, Greece, France and Slovakia to German concentration and extermination camps between 1939 and 1945. In the literature, the abbreviated designation Brunner I is sometimes used for him, in distinction to Anton Brunner (Brunner II).

Brunner lived in Germany under a false name until 1954. He was sentenced to death twice in absentia by French military courts in 1954. Shortly before his unmasking, he absconded with the help of others to Damascus, where he lived until his death. Syria's government covered up his whereabouts and always denied it. Brunner has never had to answer to a German court. There were repeated indications that German intelligence services were protecting him. In 2001, he was again sentenced to life in prison in France, and in 2007, a reward of 50,000 euros was offered in Austria for information leading to his discovery and capture.

He lost an eye and several fingers in two letter bomb attacks in 1961 and 1980. In interviews in the mid-1980s, Brunner indulged in anti-Semitic hate speech and prided himself on his actions. Rumors swirled of his death several times in the 1990s; in contrast, a sighting was still rumored as late as 2001. Later reports referred to witness statements that Brunner had died in 2001 or in 2009/2010. Exact information on his death is not yet available. In February 2021, he was declared dead by the Döbling District Court.

Denial of access to files by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution

Beginning in 2012, a German journalist sought to gain insight into the files held by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, BfV), in order to find out why Brunner was able to evade arrest and trial for the rest of his life, and which accomplices and official channels helped him escape from Germany to Damascus in 1954. Only after the journalist had filed an action for failure to act did the BfV reject the application on the grounds that it only had at its disposal documents that had been created after 1984 and were thus subject to the archival protection period of 30 years. On 25 July 2013, the Cologne Administrative Court ordered the BfV to re-decide on the application because a discretionary decision had to be made on a possible shortening of the protection period. On 10 October 2017, the Higher Administrative Court of North Rhine-Westphalia granted the BfV's application for leave to appeal against the first-instance judgment, but only partially granted the appeal in its judgment of 5 July 2018. According to the court, a discretionary decision was only permissible and necessary with regard to the inspection of documents that came into the files more than 30 years ago. Contrary to the BfV's view, the Court of Appeal ruled that a document was the individual document or writing contained in a file and that a file in the BfV's business area was a sub-unit of the overall file, not the overall file as a whole. The BfV filed the admitted appeal. The BfV president at the time, Hans-Georg Maaßen, threatened to work towards amending the Federal Archives Act if necessary: "If the ruling by the OVG Münster in the Brunner case is confirmed by the Federal Administrative Court, we will ensure that the (Federal Archives) Act is amended." Members of parliament from the SPD and FDP criticized Maaßen for treating press freedom and the judiciary with disrespect. The media policy spokesman for the SPD parliamentary group, Martin Rabanus, said: "The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution must protect our democracy, not Nazis."

In July 2018, survivors of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp and the International Auschwitz Committee also demanded the disclosure of all files on Nazi war criminal Alois Brunner in Germany. In December 2019, the Federal Administrative Court rejected the appeal and confirmed the opinion of the Higher Administrative Court.

Documentaries

• The B. File - Alois Brunner: The Story of a Mass Murderer (1998)
• Nazis in the BND - New Service and Old Comrades; Film by Christine Rütten, 2013
• Alois Brunner, le bourreau de Drancy; a documentary by Philippe Tourancheau - France, 2018, Éclectic Production, with the support of the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah.