Aviva Studios, Manchester
This story involving an SS officer who fled to Syria after the war is simply staged but slippery, intriguing and full of nuance
The flight of Nazis including Adolf Eichmann to hideouts in Latin America after the second world war is well documented. Mudar Alhaggi’s drama tells of one SS officer who flew east instead, but comes at his life story obliquely.
We hear how Alois Brunner, known as Eichmann’s right-hand man, settled in Damascus and apparently became a security adviser to the president of Syria, Hafez al-Assad. He is drawn as something of a state-sponsored fugitive who, ideologically, brought a piece of the Third Reich with him as he helped to develop Syria’s intelligence system, with its modern-day torture methods.
