Alois
Brunner was born in Austria in 1912 and joined the
Austrian Nazi Party in 1931 at the age of 19. His
anti-Semitism was considered to be so extreme that he
was swiftly tapped to be Adolf Eichmann’s private
secretary. As head of the Nazi’s Jewish affairs
office in prewar Vienna, he organized persecution that
forced thousands of Jews to flee to other European
countries and the United States.
When World War II started, he sent 47,000 Austrian
Jews to concentration camps. After organizing mass
roundups in Berlin, he transferred to Greece, where he
was responsible for deporting all 43,000 Jews in
Salonika within just two months.
In June 1943, he was sent to France to take over the
Drancy transit camp near Paris from its French
administrators. During 14 months in France, Brunner
sent an estimated 25,000 men, women and children to
their deaths.
A survivor, Georges Appel, later recalled that
Brunner's mean, cruel demeanor was matched only
by his immoral behavior: "He would beat elderly
women, and ordered the inmates to prepare Postcards
saying that all was well with them." These were
mailed after they had been sent to the gas chambers ..
Brunner often sought after young Jewish women, either
pregnant or with infants, to join the deportation to
the Nazi death camps. As he said: "I can't let
children live. They will be future terrorists."
Once Brunner ordered the arrest and deportation of
more than 200 French Jewish children. They were loaded
aboard the crude cattle cars without any adults to
accompany them and were never seen again, according to
author Didier Epelbaum in his 1990 book Alois
Brunner.
SS Hauptsturmfuhrer Brunner also transported the children
of Izieu to Auschwitz. One of the most wanted of all
war criminals, Brunner was responsible for the killing
of thousands and thousands of Jews.