Alois Brunner, Franz Stangl, Gustav Wagner, Aribert Heim – all of them Nazi monsters who deserved the worst of punishments. But these men were just four of the many war criminals of the Holocaust who found refuge in Syria and Egypt after escaping justice following the Second World War. Whether it was aiding the missile programme of Egypt’s leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, or advising the Syria’s Assad regime on torture, many proved to be useful. But there were many other, less talented, apparatchiks who simply benefited from the Middle East’s dictatorial regimes’ willingness to give them a new home. ‘These people helped the regimes in Syria and Egypt to build their capacities for torture, for surveillance, but we shouldn’t exaggerate their contributions,’ Israeli historian Professor Danny Orbach told MailOnline. He added: ‘All sorts of charlatans could pretend to be experts when they were not. Very few were actually helpful. Most of them were third or fourth grade experts.’ Among those who proved less useful was ‘murderous’ former concentration camp doctor Hans Eisele, who became a ‘wreck’ of a drug addict in Cairo. But, regardless of whether or not they were helpful to their new benefactors, dozens of Nazis – many of them war criminals – found refuge in the Middle East.
via daily mail: The Nazi ‘Arab Ratline’: How Hitler’s WWII monsters found refuge in Syria and Egypt after escaping Germany