Where Did the Nazis Go After the War?

Last week, media revealed that Alois Brunner, one of the Nazi criminals, died of natural causes in Damascus four years ago at the age of 98, without ever appearing before the law or at least confessing to his crimes. He was considered the right-hand man of Eichmann, the architect of the Holocaust in Nazi Germany, and was estimated to be responsible for the deaths of 130,000 Jews during the war. He managed to reach Damascus in the 1950s and helped the Assad family as an 'advisor' until his death in 2010. Although Mossad identified him and attempted to assassinate him twice by sending explosive packages, they only managed to injure him in the eye and fingers. Why Damascus? Brunner's refuge in Damascus is not unique; Franz Stangl, the commander of the Treblinka camp, was another Nazi who, despite his involvement in the massacre of 80,000 people, managed to reach Damascus with the help of a Catholic bishop. After World War II and the defeat of Nazi Germany, many of those with blood on their hands fled to escape Europe and the tribunal established in Nuremberg, Germany, to address the crimes. Many of them fled to South America—countries including Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay—and some, knowing that Israel was more eager than any other country to punish them, took refuge right next to the enemy in Middle Eastern countries to remain safe due to these countries' hostile relations with Israel. Syria was not alone in this; for example, before moving to Syria, Brunner was active in Egypt under the alias Dr. George Fisher as an arms dealer. Aribert Ferdinand Heim, or 'Dr. Death'—a doctor who butchered Jews in one of the Nazi camps—lived for years under the alias 'Tariq Farid Hussein' in Cairo, and it was only less than five years ago that his son revealed he died of cancer in Egypt in the summer of 92. It is even said that Gamal Abdel Nasser, the nationalist leader of Egypt, after a coup that brought him to power, appointed the former head of the Gestapo in Düsseldorf, Joachim Daumling, who had taken refuge in Egypt, to form the security organization of his government. Many notable Nazis who fled to Cairo can be added to this list; those who, due to their military and security experiences and a shared sense of animosity towards Jews, managed to establish mutually beneficial relations with some countries in the region. It may be difficult to accept, but after several decades, many Nazis have never paid a price commensurate with their role in one of the largest massacres in human history; although after several decades, the perpetrators of the World War II massacres, if they have not died, are now very elderly. The famous Nuremberg trial, which was held in November 1945 and organized by the winners of the war, only prosecuted 22 high-ranking Nazi officials. Alongside these convicted individuals, most of whom were hanged, a majority of officers and non-commissioned officers were helped to escape and were sheltered by those who still felt sympathy for Nazi Germany. Some of these officials and associates of the Third Reich also ended up in the United States, and strangely, their names have resurfaced in the headlines in recent weeks. The U.S. Congress early this month passed a bill stating that from now on, no monthly social security payments would be made to surviving German Nazis from World War II. This decision came two months after the Associated Press revealed that many of these individuals not only had not appeared before the law and been punished for their crimes but had received millions of dollars in monthly allowances from taxes paid by American citizens since 1979; a matter that sparked outrage and disbelief among many in the United States and forced the House of Representatives to take immediate action. Apparently, some of the fleeing Nazis who immigrated to the United States managed to obtain residency without revealing their true identities, leading relatively quiet lives, working like ordinary citizens, and benefiting from social services. However, the U.S. judicial system—albeit after years—gradually discovered their true identities one by one and decided to rid itself of them. Since forming a court and deporting these individuals from the United States was a cumbersome and time-consuming process, they were asked to voluntarily leave U.S. soil while still receiving their monthly social security payments. By accepting this condition, these individuals left the United States and had their citizenship revoked, but over the years, using the monthly payments from the U.S. social services system, they built comfortable and affluent lives in another part of the world. For example, Martin Hartmann, one of the personnel from the Nazi extermination camps, moved from his residence in Arizona to Berlin in 2007 following the aforementioned agreement, and his American citizenship was immediately revoked so that the German government would have to accept him. Arthur Rudolph, one of the most prominent scientists of Nazi Germany, was also transferred to the United States after the war to utilize his technical knowledge but went to West Germany in 1984 and then voluntarily revoked his citizenship at the U.S. embassy. West Germany's protests to the U.S. were in vain, and Rudolph remained in Germany. This deal between the U.S. social services system and former Nazis allowed the U.S. to claim that it did not harbor Nazis without explaining at what cost it got rid of them. Another example mentioned in the Associated Press report is Martin Bartsch, one of the guards of one of the death camps, who in 1987, after several decades of living in America and working as a janitor in a building, came to Austria, and two days after his plane landed, his American citizenship was suddenly revoked. Austria had to grant him Austrian citizenship, and Bartsch continued to receive a pension from the United States until his death in 1989. According to the Associated Press report, since 1979, at least 38 of the 66 Nazis deported in America—due to what officials call a 'legal loophole'—have continued to receive their monthly allowances, an amount that, by rough calculation, amounts to millions of dollars. It is not surprising that, according to the Associated Press report, Jacob Denzinger, one of the personnel from the infamous Auschwitz camp, now lives in Croatia at the expense of American taxpayers after leaving the U.S.