Nazi Arabia: Alois Brunner, Aribert Heim, Johann von Leers, Leopold Gleim, Wilhelm Voss, Otto Remer, et al

The Axis of Torture was taught by a Nazi and is likely to grow

Muhammad Hussein

January 6, 2021 

Alois Brunner was a member of the infamous SS, and a leading figure of the Nazi movement in Vienna before World War Two. He was responsible for the capture and transportation of an estimated 128,000 Jews all across Europe, sending them to concentration camps, one of which he commanded in France. According to Adolf Eichmann, one of the most prominent SS officers behind the Nazi Holocaust, Brunner was his "best man".

Following the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, the Americans helped post-war Germany to form a new intelligence agency. Headed by former Nazi spy chief Reinhard Gehlen, it apparently recruited thousands of SS and Nazi veterans, of which Brunner was one. He escaped detection by the international community by working as a driver for the US military.

Brunner left Germany in 1954, going first to Rome, then Cairo, before ending up in Damascus where he became an advisor to the government. There, it is said that he taught torture and interrogation techniques to the Syrian intelligence services throughout the rule of President Bashar Al-Assad's father and predecessor, Hafez Al-Assad.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20210106-the-axis-of-torture-was-taught-by-a-nazi-and-is-likely-to-grow/amp/

The Secret History of Israel's War Against Hitler's Scientists

Apr 12, 2018 — Years after the Holocaust, the Mossad learned that Egypt was working with German scientists on weapons of mass destruction.
https://www.newsweek.com/2018/04/20/israel-secret-war-mossad-hitler-scientists-world-war-ii-egypt-nasser-883630.html

Hitler's Henchmen in Arabia - The Daily Beast
PARTNERS IN EVIL 
Guy Walters

Dec 7, 2014 — Nazi Alois Brunner’s confirmed death in Damascus reveals an uncomfortable truth: Egypt and Syria have long ties to Nazi Germany and long provided sanctuary to fugitive war criminals.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/hitlers-henchmen-in-arabia

Eichmann's Best Man Lived and Died in Syria

The reported death of Nazi war criminal Alois Brunner, Adolf Eichmann's unrepentant "right-hand man," reminds us how he lived a long consequence-free life.

ADAM CHANDLER

DECEMBER 1, 2014

Over the weekend, the death of Alois Brunner, the world's most wanted Nazi, was all but confirmed by the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Brunner, who was the top aide to "Final Solution" architect Adolf Eichmann, is thought to have died four years ago in Syria, where he lived for decades after sending nearly 130,000 Jews to Nazi death camps during World War II.

Though the death was first suspected nearly four years ago, the ongoing Syrian civil war made independent confirmation impossible. Brunner would have turned 102 two years old on Monday.

In a conversation with Jodi Rudoren, Efraim Zuroff, the noted Nazi hunter, summed up Brunner's legacy thusly:

He was a notorious anti-Semite, sadist, fanatic Nazi. The only known interview we have with him was to a German newsmagazine in 1985, in which he was asked if he had any regrets, and he said, ‘My only regret is I didn’t murder more Jews.’

Brunner's presumed 2010 death is more than a surreal historical footnote for a number of reasons. His story is not just one of a mass killer who escaped, but rather a man who found a way to continue killing long after he fled Europe. To put this all into some context, I spoke with Deborah Lipstadt, a professor and Holocaust historian at Emory University, about Brunner's post-war legacy.

"He didn't just go fishing for the next 30 years. He participated and apparently advised Assad."
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/12/eichmanns-best-man-lived-and-died-in-syria/383296/

HITLER'S SHADOW - National Archives |

by R Breitman ·  HITLER'S. SHADOW. Nazi War Criminals, U.S.. Intelligence, and the Cold War. Richard Breitman and Norman J.W. Goda. Published by the National Archives
https://www.archives.gov/files/iwg/reports/hitlers-shadow.pdf

Black Terror White Soldiers: Islam, Fascism & the New Age - Page 310

David Livingstone · 2013 

... for several thousand Nazi fugitives including former SS Captain Alois Brunner, ... Both Nasser and Sadat belonged to the overtly fascist "Young Egypt" (Misr al-Fatah)... Nevertheless, Young Egypt came to be modeled directly on Hitler's party, complete with paramilitary Green Shirts aping the Nazi Brown Shirts..
https://books.google.com/books?id=FYy7TTmQoD4C&pg=PA310

Egypt faces questions on Nazi fugitive's past

Nazi hunters urged Egypt on Friday to come clean about how much it knew about a fugitive dubbed "Dr. Death," who reportedly lived there for decades until he died in 1992.

Feb. 6, 2009, 4:50 PM EST / Source: The Associated Press

Nazi hunters urged Egypt on Friday to come clean about how much it knew about a fugitive dubbed "Dr. Death," who reportedly lived here for decades until he died in 1992. But Egypt has long kept a strict silence about former Nazis reported to have taken refuge on its soil.

The discovery of Aribert Heim's secret life throws light on how the Arab world took in members of the Nazi regime after World War II, said Efraim Zuroff, head Nazi hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center. The region's role as a haven has gone little examined while researchers focused on the larger, better known influx of Nazis to Latin America.

A number of Nazis are believed to have been welcomed in the 1950s by the Egyptian regime of then-President Gamal Abdel-Nasser, who was locked in an intense rivalry with Israel that erupted into wars in 1956 and 1967. Nasser enlisted some Nazis to train Egypt's military or produce anti-Israel propaganda — and Israel feared they were involved in building a rocket program.

So far there is no indication that the Austrian-born Heim, a former concentration camp doctor accused of carrying out gruesome, deadly experiments on Jewish prisoners, played any role with the Egyptian government.

Instead, it appears he lived a quiet life in downtown Cairo since the early 1960s. A later convert to Islam, he bought sweets for friends from a famed confectionery and was known for playing pingpong and taking long walks for exercise, said Egyptians who knew him.

The only hint of his past — besides a constant refusal to be photographed — was the personal "research" that he wrote purporting to prove that the Jews of Israel are not true Semites, according to the son of Heim's Egyptian dentist, who saw the paper.

Keeping silent

The Egyptian government has been silent since Heim's presence in Egypt was first reported by The New York Times and Germany's ZPF television Thursday. Government officials and several former Nasser-era officials approached by The Associated Press refused to comment on any aspect of the reports.

In this 1959 file photo released by the State Office of Criminal Investigation in Stuttgart, southern Germany, Dr. Aribert Heim, a former Nazi concentration camp doctor and wanted war criminal, is seen at unknown location. Documents have surfaced in Egypt showing the world's most-wanted Nazi war criminal, concentration camp doctor Aribert Heim, died in Cairo in 1992, Germany's ZDF television and The New York Times reported Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2009. The report said Heim was living under a pseudonym and had converted to Islam by the time of his death from intestinal cancer.

One current security official would say only that if Heim was in Egypt, he was let in under a previous government. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said Egypt would look into the reports.

The silence reflects a reluctance to acknowledge an era that is potentially embarrassing now, three decades after Egypt's peace accords with Israel.

German investigators say they want to search in Egypt for definitive proof of Heim's death and are preparing a request to Egypt for permission.

It remains unknown whether the Egyptian government knew who Heim was when he first entered the country in 1963 and, if not, whether it subsequently found out. He entered using his real last name and middle name, Ferdinand Heim, which appear on a 1964 residency permit found in a satchel of Heim's documents in a Cairo hotel where he lived his last years.

Hunting for Nazis

Zuroff said Heim's name was on a 1967 list of 26 former Nazis believed to be hiding in Egypt at that time, drawn up by Wiesenthal, a Holocaust survivor who became the most prominent Nazi hunter.

Zuroff said he didn't know why the lead on Heim was never pursued. It appears to have been forgotten: Most reports on Heim over the past decade speculated he was living in Latin America.

Also on the list was Alois Brunner, long one of the most wanted Nazi fugitives as commander of a camp that processed Jews for deportation from occupied France. Brunner is believed to have later moved to Damascus and worked for the Syrian government. He is widely thought to have died in Syria in the 1990s, though the Damascus regime has never confirmed he was there.

Of the 26 on Wiesenthal's list, Zuroff said, "I don't think any of them are alive — or are in Egypt, for that matter — because they have either left the country or died in Egypt." He said no pressure was ever put "on Egypt in any way to cooperate in investigation and prosecution of Nazi war crimes."

Sheltering Nazis

Rafael Medoff, director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies in Washington, said Cairo should start accounting for Nazis it harbored.

"In the 1950s, Egypt opened its doors wide to fugitive Nazi war criminals," he said in an e-mail interview with the AP. "The time has come for Egypt to give a full accounting of its policy of sheltering Nazi war criminals — and if any of those Nazis are still alive, they should be surrendered for prosecution."

The total number of Third Reich figures who fled to Egypt is not known, and the Egyptian government has never acknowledged any were present.

Egypt would not be the only state to try to draw on the expertise of former Nazis — the United States took in a number of German rocket scientists to work in its space program, particularly Wernher von Braun, who headed NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.

The prospect of Egypt using Nazis to develop a rocket program "was a major concern for Israel," Zuroff said. In the early 1960s, Israel sent a spy posing as a former Nazi, Wolfgang Lotz, who reported back on German scientists working in Egyptian armaments programs, according to Lotz's 1972 memoir.

But most Nazis taken in by Nasser's regime appear to have been involved in training the Egyptian military and police or in producing propaganda to foment anti-Israeli attitudes.

Sympathy among Arabs

Among those whom researchers have placed in Egypt were Johann von Leers, a Nazi propagandist, who allegedly worked in Egypt's Information Ministry, converted to Islam and died in Cairo in 1965. Leopold Gleim, a Gestapo colonel in Poland, is believed to have worked with Egypt's secret police.

Nasser touted himself as the leader of the Arab world against Israel, and his regime fought the Jewish state in two wars, suffering a devastating defeat in 1967.

"In the Arab world, there was a great sympathy to Nazis," said Emad Gad, an expert on Egyptian relations with Israel at Cairo's Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies.

But the welcome began to chill during the 1960s, when Egypt came to rely more on Soviet aid and training for its military. The atmosphere for former Nazis further soured when Nasser's successor — Anwar Sadat — began the peace process with Israel in the mid-1970s, signing a peace accord in 1979.

Gad said Heim's story may give hints on how the Egyptian government became less willing to protect hidden Nazis.

Heim's documents suggest he likely converted to Islam in the late 1970s, since the first one bearing his Muslim name, Tarek Hussein Farid, is dated 1981.

Gad speculated Heim converted after "he was advised that there will be no political cover anymore and that he has to search for other means."

"So he choose to convert and dissolve in the community," Gad said.
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna29058048

The Enemy of My Enemy: The Alarming Convergence of Militant Islam and the Extreme Right - George Michael · 2006 · Page 121

Not long after the war, many German military officers and Nazi party officials were granted sanctuary in Middle Eastern countries, most notably Egypt and Syria, where they helped develop the militaries and intelligences agencies of those ... In the early postwar years, Egypt hosted many leading Nazi refugees. For example, Major General Otto Ernst Remer, the officer that squelched the anti-Hitler coup in July 1944, found refuge in Egypt, where he offered his services to the Nasser regime. With the help of Remer and other German military and technical advisers, Egypt developed a support base for Algerian, Moroccan, and Tunisian guerrillas fighting against France, as well as anti-British movements in Aden and the Mau Mau.  
https://books.google.com/books?id=RvLtAAAAMAAJ&q=syria+nasser+nazis+hitler

The Silent Warriors - Page 130 - Joshua Tadmor · 1969

The Germans in Nasser's Service ...

that their task was made impossible by the lack of trained Egyptian personnel.

Foss had also been helpful in the reorganization of the Egyptian army following its defeat in 1948 by Israel.

At his behest a group of ranking Nazi army officers was brought to Egypt and set about revamping that country's armed forces.

At the head of this Nazi military assistance mission was the former Wehrmacht infantry commander, General Wilhelm Pfermbecher.

Until the Soviet Union became Egypt's principal military supplier in the late 1950's, the Germans in Cairo enjoyed a privileged status. Because they were careful to avoid involvement in domestic politics, their position did not suffer at the time of the "Free Officers" revolt in 1954.

Under the new regime, in fact, the Nazi advisers were held in even higher esteem, as their anti-Jewish records guaranteed their usefulness and loyalty to the anti-Israeli orientation of Nasser's government.

Egypt's experience in the Sinai Campaign of 1956, however, led to the diminished influence of the German military advisers, who were made to serve as scapegoats for the humiliating defeat by Israel°

With the introduction of Soviet and Czechoslovak military instructors in 1957, most of the German military advisers were relegated to second-rate positions.

By this time the number of Nazi refugees in Egypt had reached several thousand.

One of the best-known former Nazis was Professor Jonathan Von Leers who had been one of Goebbels' chief assistants and was wanted as a war criminal.

Shortly after World War II he escaped with his family to Argentina, but with the overthrow of dictator Juan Perón in 1955, Von Leers, like many other Germans in Argentina, feared that the new regime would be less zealous in protecting Nazi criminals from Israeli agents already hunting for Adolf Eichmann, Martin Bormann, and Dr. Mangele , the sadistic "Angel of Death" of Auschwitz...
https://books.google.com/books?id=zgu5AAAAIAAJ&q=egypt+hosted+many.nazi.refugees

Hitler and His Henchmen - Page 109 - Pyramid Books, 1967

Target For Israeli Agents 

Kurt von Gottberg, a witness at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, testified: "It was a practice of Dirlewanger's brigade to seize villages, shut the inhabitants in barns and houses, set the buildings afire and shoot down the human torches when they tried to escape." 

Dirlewanger buried wounded prisoners alive, then dallied to hear their screams as they slowly suffocated.

He also enjoyed giving girls lethal injections with a hypodermic needle. After watching them die in agony, he would have their bodies boiled for soap. 

Now old and senile, Hitler's most degenerate monster lives in constant fear that even his concentration camp guards will not be able to save him from the secret agents who have stalked him for 17 years.

Another inhuman monster, Major Alois Anton Brunner, learned recently that his crimes have not been forgotten. Eichmann's most successful deportation expert, Brunner sent millions of Jews to Nazi death camps, conducting mass round-ups in Berlin, Vienna, Paris, Salonika and Bratislava. 

For five years, he carried out "the final solution of the Jewish question" with ruthless efficiency. 

A Vienna court sentenced him to hang in May, 1946, but he escaped and fled to Egypt. Brunner changed his name to George Fischer and pretended, as had so many other fugitive Nazis, to be a respectable exporter-importer.

He later became Nasser's secret police adviser in Syria.

On September 18, 1961, Brunner went to the main post office in Damascus to pick up his mail. 

He received three letters and a small parcel wrapped in brown paper. As he opened the package, it exploded. He was badly burned on the face, chest and arms. Several postal clerks and customers also were hurt by the bomb blast. 

Lt. Col. Abdul Hamis Sarraj, Nasser's vice president in Syria and chief of Syrian secret police, personally rushed Brunner to a hospital - an indication of the ex-Nazi's importance in the Nasser regime. 

Surgeons saved Brunner's life, but had to remove his right eye. 

His only visitors at the hospital were Nasser politicians and police officials. Secret policemen, some of them Arabized Germans, surrounded the hospital and guarded Brunner's private room night and day.

Ten days after the assassination attempt, Syria broke away from Nasser's United Arab Republic.

Syrian security forces arrested Brunner as his bodyguards were trying to smuggle him out of the hospital. Along with Sarraj and other Nasser.
https://books.google.com/books?id=2CVHAAAAIAAJ&q=%22changed+his+name+to+George+Fischer+and+pretended+,+as+had%22
https://books.google.com/books?id=2CVHAAAAIAAJ&q=Brunner
https://books.google.com/books?id=2CVHAAAAIAAJ&q=%22Abdul+Hamis+Sarraj+,%C2%A0Nasser%27s%C2%A0vice%22

___

Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the ... Congress

United States. Congress · 1957. Page 4153

Nasser's Nazi advisers 

The dexterity and speed with which the Nasser government has moved against its Jewish population have been cited by many observers as indicating that practiced hands have been guiding this campaign.

It is well known that Egypt employs many foreign advisers, including Communist technicians from Russia and her satellites. But the employment of German Nazis, former Wehrmacht officers and members of the Afrika Korps has been largely hidden from the world.

At present , it is estimated that some 200 or more work in Egypt, including: 

SS Gen. Wilhelm Voss - in charge of Egypt's Central Planning Board and chief adviser to the War Minister.

Dr. Johann von Leers, associate of Goebbels and notorious anti-Semite - advises on anti-Jewish propaganda.

Indicative of Egypt's attempt to hide her Nazis is the fact that William Stevenson of the Toronto Star was expelled from the country 24 hours after filing the first interview with von Leers.

Gen. Otto Remer - headed the Egyptian training program which created the fedayeen guerrilla fighters.
https://books.google.com/books?id=n3hajPxtxLcC&pg=PA4153&dq=%22some+200%22