Anton Brunner (war criminal)

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Anton Brunner (born August 8, 1898 in Bregana ; † May 24, 1946 in Vienna ) was an Austrian employee of the " Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna ", which was practically under the Eichmannreferat in the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA). In his functions, Brunner was jointly responsible for the deportation of Jews to the concentration and extermination camps and was sentenced to death and executed for this in Vienna after the end of the war .

biography

Brunner moved with his parents to Vienna from Croatia and took part in the First World War as a soldier . As a trained accountant, he worked for a company in the 1920s and was a member of the Social Democratic Workers' Party (SDAP) and the trade union. After he became unemployed in 1934, after the " Anschluss of Austria " to the German Reich in March 1938 he was given a job as a clerk at the Reich Commissioner for Reunification. His tasks there included the processing of denominational associations in the association's standstill department.

Brunner, a member of the NSDAP since 1939 and not a member of the SS , started working at the “Central Office for Jewish Emigration” in Vienna from summer 1939 through the mediation of Adolf Eichmann . Within this office, Brunner was responsible for the financial processing of the Jewish religious communities from the province as well as retraining issues. From 1941 onwards, his superior was Alois Brunner in the central office , who was referred to there as Brunner I in contrast to Anton Brunner ( Brunner II ). At that time, Anton Brunner was head of department in the central office and responsible for interning Jewish citizens in assembly camps in Leopoldstadt in Vienna . Before the Jewish people were brought together from the assembly camps for deportation transports to the ghettos and extermination camps, the so-called “ pickings ” led by Brunner from mid-1941 to March 1943 took place . These also included the submission of a declaration of the assets present, the surrender of valuables and baggage searches.

In March 1943 Brunner moved to the "Central Office for the Regulation of the Jewish Question " in Prague , the former " Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Bohemia and Moravia ", and was employed there until the beginning of May 1945. In the meantime, Brunner belonged from March to December 1944, also because of his knowledge of the Hungarian language, to the special command Eichmann in Budapest . There he was involved in the deportation of the Hungarian Jews to the Auschwitz concentration camp .

After the end of the war

At the beginning of the Prague uprising on May 5, 1945, Brunner fled the city in a motorcade with other employees of the Central Office. He was sitting with Ernst Girzick in a car that pulled out of the column due to a defect. After the end of the war, Brunner was arrested and tried in the People's Court in Vienna. Brunner was accused of having participated in at least 48 order pickings in the assembly camps of Vienna's Second District and was thus responsible for the deportation of 48,000 Jews. Holocaust survivors who were victims or witnesses of Brunner's humiliation and mistreatment weighed heavily on Brunner's statements. After a one-week main hearing, Brunner was sentenced to death (with financial collapse) on May 10, 1946 (LG Vienna Vg 1 g Vr 4574/45) and executed on May 24, 1946.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hans Safrian: Eichmann und seine Gehilfen , Frankfurt am Main 1995, p. 56.
  2. ↑ indictment the prosecution Vienna (15 St 12351/45) against Anton Brunner of 12 April 1946 (pdf; 887 kB)
  3. ↑ Gabriele Anderl, Dirk Rupnow, Alexandra-Eileen Wenck, Historians' Commission of the Republic of Austria: The Central Office for Jewish Emigration as a Robbery Institution, Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2004, p. 274ff.
  4. ↑ Simon Wiesenthal Multimedia Learning Center ( Memento from February 17, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ Government resolution : Evacuate - Eichmann deported the Hungarian Jews - Documentation , in Die Welt , edition of September 3, 1999
  6. ↑ Jan Björn Potthast: The Jewish Central Museum of the SS in Prague - Opponent Research and Genocide under National Socialism . Munich 2002, p. 380.
  7. ^ Documentation archive of the Austrian resistance The punishment of deportation crimes - example: Anton Brunner
    Claudia Kuretsidis-Haider: People's jurisdiction and denazification in Austria. Linz 2004, online (PDF; 336 kB) in the forum OoeGeschichte.at
personal data
SURNAME Brunner, Anton
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian perpetrator of the Holocaust
DATE OF BIRTH August 8, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Bregana
DATE OF DEATH May 24, 1946
Place of death Vienna