Felix Brinkmann survived the holocaust, apparently literally talking his way out of the gas chamber 5 times in Auschwitz. He was apparently murdered in New York, found face down, hands tied with the results of blunt force applied to his 90 year old body. Muffti hopes they find the perps and in short order. From CNN.

The New York City disco sphere of the 1970s was a blinding world spinning unto itself, running on celebrities, celebrity worshipers, cocaine, polyester, slick operators and music with memorable beats and forgettable lyrics.

Everyone had a story, some not worth telling, but few were as compelling as Guido Felix Brinkmann’s.

Mr. Brinkmann, known as Felix, managed Adam’s Apple, a disco on First Avenue on the Upper East Side, and while others would boast of their money, sexual prowess and dancing skills, he could speak of having avoided death four times at Auschwitz, according to a close friend.

“Felix is one tough man who lived a life that people could only imagine going through,” said Richard Dietl, known as Bo, a private investigator, former police detective and a semicelebrity himself, who said he had been friends with Mr. Brinkmann since 1971.

On Thursday, Mr. Brinkmann, 89, was found dead in his apartment at 435 East 65th Street by his building superintendent just before 6 p.m. Someone had called the superintendent because Mr. Brinkmann had not shown up at his job in the Bronx.

Investigators said he was lying face-down on his bed, his hands tied behind his back with a sheet. He appeared to have been struck on the back of the head, they said. The cause of death was compression of the neck, a condition similar to asphyxiation, Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner’s office, said after an autopsy on Friday.

Mr. Brinkmann’s apartment had been ransacked, and officials said robbery was the most likely motive.

A law enforcement official said a man and a woman visited Mr. Brinkmann at 11:15 p.m. Wednesday. Investigators believe that the couple, whom they have not identified, left through the garage after stealing Mr. Brinkmann’s car.

Mr. Brinkmann’s car, a 2009 Honda Civic with a license plate that read FELIX B, was found early Friday afternoon at East 136th Street and Willis Avenue in the Bronx by police officers on patrol. Investigators began searching it for evidence.

No arrests had been made as of Friday evening, the police said.

Mr. Dietl said Mr. Brinkmann drove the car to work every day in the Bronx, where he worked in a managerial capacity.

“Even though he was 30 years older than me, he had a very young mind and he was very active for his age,” Mr. Dietl said, adding that Mr. Brinkmann was like a “brother-father” to him. “He was very active. He loved ladies.”

Mr. Brinkmann was born in 1920; Mr. Dietl said he was born in Latvia.

In the late 1930s, Mr. Dietl said, Mr. Brinkmann and his family were moved to a ghetto because Mr. Brinkmann’s mother was Jewish. Later he was moved to several concentration camps, ending at Auschwitz. It was there, he told Mr. Dietl, that he had been in the line for the gas chambers on four separate occasions, but managed to avoid death each time.

He also met his wife, Mona, in Auschwitz, Mr. Dietl said. She died in recent years, he said, and added that their son, a doctor in Portland, Ore., was flying to New York on Friday.

After Adam’s Apple closed in the early 1990s, Mr. Brinkmann started his job in the Bronx. He had a licensed gun, and on April 20 he was arrested after being accused of menacing someone in the building where he worked, a police official said. The Bronx district attorney’s office said the case was not prosecuted because the accuser was not cooperative.

At the 15-story brick building on the Upper East Side where Mr. Brinkmann lived, most of the residents who were interviewed entering and leaving on Friday said they did not know him. Those who did said they were surprised and saddened by the news.

Mr. Dietl said that Mr. Brinkmann was not reluctant to talk about the past, and that he recounted stories of his time in the ghetto and the concentration camps.

“He used to tell me all these stories, fill my mind up with all these stories,” he said. “He was a man who had no hatred.”

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