Dorothea Schlegel Artist in Residence

Research Area 1: "Competing Communities"

October – December 2024

The Final Days of Alois Brunner (a theatrical work-in-progress)

Alois Brunner spent his final years in a dark, narrow cellar, eating barely enough to stay alive. It is said that, according to one of his guards, he spent his final days weeping and screaming. Brunner met this fate not at the hands of those who repeatedly tried to arrest him for his role in the Final Solution in Nazi Germany but at the hands of a regime that had, for decades, granted him protection and immunity.

Beginning in the 1960s, Brunner was given a safe haven by the Syrian regime, which always denied that he was living in Syria. Brunner was useful to the Syrian regime: He had ample experience in establishing security services and methods of torture and interrogation; and he was a valuable pawn to be traded with Israel and the West when necessary. Brunner probably did not expect the Assad regime to turn against him at the end of his life. But Hafez al-Assad had decided that Brunner was no longer useful, especially as no one seemed to be chasing him anymore.

The story of Alois Brunner, with all its remaining secrets, goes beyond that of a Nazi captain who fled and lived a long life under the aegis of the Syrian regime until it turned on him. Among its most significant elements is what it reveals about the practices of an Assad regime that relied on political pragmatism to manipulate the contradictions of Cold War alliances. While granting Brunner protection and immunity, Assad’s regime led Syria steadily into the Soviet fold, developing close relations with the socialist camp and with East Germany in particular, whose terrorising security apparatus, the Stasi, trained Syrian security officers and provided Syria with generous security and military support.

Mohammad Al Attar is a Syrian playwright and essayist. At university, he completed a degree in English literature, followed by a degree in Theatre Studies from the Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts, Damascus. He then completed an MA in Applied Theatre at London’s Goldsmiths University. His work unfolds at the threshold between fiction and documentation. His plays are translated into many languages and staged worldwide, including at Volksbühne Berlin, HKW Berlin, Avignon Festival, Festival d’Automne Paris, the Lincoln Center in New York, Kunsten Festival in Brussels, the Royal Court Theatre in London, Adelaide Fringe Festival in Australia and Ruhrtriennale in Germany, among others. His plays include Withdrawal, Could You Please Look into the Camera?, Antigone of Shatila, While I Was Waiting, Aleppo. A Portrait of Absence, Iphigenia, The Factory, Damascus 2045, Yesterday’s Encounter and the contemporary opera Searching for Zenobia.