It was a fitting end for a monster who condemned more than 100,000 Jews to their deaths.

Alois Brunner, once the world’s most wanted Nazi, spent his final years in a cell in Damascus, where he was given the choice of an egg or a tomato to eat each day.

But in the decades he spent as a guest of the Assad regime in Syria after fleeing post-war Germany, Brunner proved his value before being condemned to prison.

As deputy to Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann, Brunner had overseen the deportations of Jews from countries including France and Austria and had conducted interrogations which reputedly left blood stains and bullet holes on the walls of his office.

The war criminal, who may have survived until 2010, advised the Syrian dictatorship on torture methods he had learned in roles that included commandant of the Drancy internment camp outside Paris.

In return, he was protected from extradition by Hafez al-Assad, the father of ousted Syrian president Bashar, who has fled to Russia after the collapse of his regime. 

But it was under Hafez – who ruled until his death in 2000 – that Brunner’s fortunes turned after he defied orders not to give interviews and so, by the 1990s, had been locked up.

By then, he had survived two letter bombs sent by Israeli intelligence that saw him lose an eye and all of the fingers on his left hand. 

Alois Brunner, once the world’s most wanted Nazi, spent his final years in a cell in Damascus, where he was given the choice of an egg or a tomato to eat each day. He was jailed after initially proving his worth to the Syrian regime by imparting his knowledge of SS torture methods

He advised the Syrian dictatorship on torture methods he had learned in roles that included commandant of the Drancy internment camp outside Paris. Above: Inmates at the Drancy camp

Nazi-hunter Efraim Zuroff said in 2014 that he was ’99 per cent sure’ that Brunner lived until 2010 before being buried in a now-unknown location in Damascus. 

The war criminal was once described by Eichmann – who was executed in Israel in 1962 after being captured by Mossad in Argentina – as one of his best men.

Eichmann would send him to oversee deportations whenever he felt they were proceeding to slowly.

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Much of his time was spent hunting down Jews who had fled to the relative safety of the Italian-occupied zone on the French Riviera. 

He is thought to have sent 47,000 Jews in Austria, 44,000 in Greece, 23,500 in France and 14,000 in Slovakia to camps. Most were murdered. 

Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal wrote in his memoirs in 1989: ‘Among Third Reich criminals still alive, Alois Brunner is undoubtedly the worst. In my eyes, he was the worst ever.

‘While Adolf Eichmann drew up the general staff plan for the extermination of the Jews, Alois Brunner implemented it.’ 

Brunner, who was sentenced in absentia to life in prison by a French court in 2001, left Germany for Egypt in 1953 with a passport in the name of Georg Fischer. 

In a 1987 phone interview with the Chicago Sun Times, Brunner stated that he did not regret his part in the Holocaust.

‘All of them deserved to die because they were the devil’s agents and human garbage. I have no regrets and I would do it again,’ he said. 

Brunner’s crimes were exposed when Eichmann was put on trial in Israel. 

Brunner was protected from extradition by Hafez al-Assad (left) and then his son Bashar, who was deposed at the weekend

Brunner was in charge of Drancy internment camp (pictured) outside Paris

It also emerged that he had tried to arrange the kidnap of Dr. Nahum Goldmann, the president of the World Jewish Congress, so he could be exchanged for Eichmann. 

But the plan crumbled when former Nazi commanders refused to take part and the plan was leaked to Wiesenthal.

Brunner lived in Damascus at 22 George Haddad Street, where other Germans in exile also lived, including Fanz Stangl, the former commandant of Treblinka concentration camp. 

However, Brunner’s movements became increasingly restricted in the 1980s and 1990s after he gave several interviews in violation of Assad Senior’s orders to keep a low profile.

In 1996, Assad ordered for him to be jailed indefinitely. One guard said that the ‘door was closed and never opened again’.

A Syrian commander is said to have instructed the jailers: ‘Don’t kill this pig, but don’t try to keep him alive as well’.

But Brunner outlived Hafez himself, who died in 2000. 

Adolf Eichmann (left in SS uniform and right at his trial), the man regarded as the architect of the Holocaust, was Brunner’s boss. He described Brunner as one of his best men. Eichmann was kidnapped from Argentina by Mossad and put on trial in Israel before being executed in 1962

There had been high hopes that former NHS eye doctor Bashar would be different, but he went on to continue his father’s reign of terror and failed to hand over Brunner.

New videos shared by rebels in Syria have revealed an ‘iron press’ that was allegedly used to crush and execute prisoners in the notorious Saydnaya Prison near Damascus. 

Amnesty International claims dozens of people were secretly executed every week in Saydnaya, estimating that up to 13,000 Syrians were killed between 2011 and 2016.

Footage of what appears to be some kind of large hydraulic press within the prison is yet to be verified, but tales of torture, deprivation, starvation and executions at Saydnaya have been widely documented.

Syrian rebels are now locked in a race against time to free thousands of prisoners who are reportedly trapped in secret cells buried deep beneath the jail despite the collapse of the Assad regime at the weekend.