Adolf Burger | |
|---|---|
 Burger in Paris, 2008 | |
| Born | (1917-08-12)12 August 1917 |
| Died | 6 December 2016(2016-12-06) (aged 99) Prague, Czech Republic |
| Nationality | Slovak (ethnic)[1][2] Czech Republic (citizen)[1] |
| Education | typography apprenticeship |
| Occupation(s) | typographer Nazi prisoner counterfeiter printing plant director |
| Known for | memoirs onOperation Bernhard |
| Political party | Communist Party |
| Spouse(s) | Gizela (born 1920, died 1942) Anna (diedc. 2004) |
| Children | 3 |
Adolf Burger (12 August 1917 – 6 December 2016) was a SlovakJewish typographer, memoir writer, andHolocaust survivor involved inOperation Bernhard. The filmThe Counterfeiters, based largely on his memoirs, won the 2007Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.[3]
Adolf Burger was born to a Jewish family inGross Lomnitz, then a mostlyethnic German[4] village in theHigh Tatras region,Spiš County. His father died when Adolf was 4½, after which his mother, four siblings, and two grandparents moved to the nearby town ofPoprad. He entered apprenticeship with a local printer and typesetter at the age of fourteen. His mother remarried a Christian, which gave her the status of a non-Jew inSlovakia after the introduction ofanti-Jewish laws by the beginning of World War II. The organizationHashomer Hatzair helped Burger's siblings to emigrate to theBritish Mandate of Palestine[5] beforeAdolf Hitler'splan to exterminate the Jews materialized.
Adolf Burger did not join them and took up a job in a printing house inBratislava in 1938. DuringWorld War II, beforeSlovakia started to deport its Jewish citizens to German concentration camps in 1942, he became one of those who received government-sponsored waivers from deportations as someone with skills indispensable for the country's economy.[6] At the request of resistance members, Burger began to print false baptismal certificates for Jews scheduled for deportation, which stated that they had been Roman Catholic from birth, or baptized so before World War II. Slovaks with such documents were not deported.[7]
Burger's activity was discovered. He was arrested on 11 August 1942, seven months after his marriage to his wife Gizela. Following his arrest, the couple were deported to theAuschwitz concentration camp where Gizela was killed later that year.[8] He was assigned to work at the new arrivals selection ramps.
After eighteen months atAuschwitz-Birkenau, Burger's training came through for him once more. He was selected forOperation Bernhard, transferred to theSachsenhausen concentration camp in April 1944, and eventually to theEbensee site of theMauthausen camp network[9] where he was liberated by the US Army on 6 May 1945.[10]
Upon returning to the place of his mother's residence at Poprad, Burger found out that, although exempt from deportation by Slovak law, she and his Christian stepfather had only months earlier been deported and killed. The application of the law changed when the German military took control of his country after the faileduprising of 1944.[11] He then settled inPrague where he reconfirmed his membership in the Communist Party, which he joined in 1933, was made director of a consortium of printing houses, remarried, and had three children. He was harassed by the secret police during the Communist purges of the early 1950s.[12] He later worked in a shipyard, headed a department in Prague's municipal services, and became director of the city-sponsored taxicabs.[13]
He died on 6 December 2016 at the age of 99.[14][3]
Burger's manuscripts were written in a mixture ofCzech andSlovak, and adjusted by editors for publication in standard Czech. Versions of his memoirs were reedited and republished several times in a variety of languages (including German, Hungarian, Persian, and Slovak) and under modified titles.
His experiences as a currency counterfeiter working on a secretNazi project in a German concentration camp were first made public in 1945 under the titleNumber 64401 Speaks (Číslo 64401 mluví) written by Sylva and Oskar Krejčí, who based their book on Burger's narrated recollections and included the photographs of the former prisoners he was able to take immediately after liberation. Adolf Burger began to rewrite his memoirs himself in the 1970s. He explained his motivation in an interview:
When I was liberated by the Americans I went home very calmly, never had a bad dream [...] For years I was silent, I didn't want to speak about this any more. It was only when the neo-Nazis started with their lies about Auschwitz that I began [...].[15]
His memoirs were published in 1983 asThe Commando of Counterfeiters (simultaneously in CzechKomando padělatelů and in a Slovak translationKomando falšovateľov), which was translated and published inEast Germany in the same year under the now-familiar titleThe Devil's Workshop (Des Teufels Werkstatt: Im Fälscherkommando des KZ Sachsenhausen). The English language edition of the book was published by Frontline Books (London) in February 2009. Adolf Burger visited London to launch the book, with events at East Finchley's Phoenix Cinema and Jewish Book Week. He visited the Bank of England on Tuesday 24 February and met the Chief Cashier, Andrew Bailey. He was given a tour of the bank and the museum and presented with one of the notes which he had forged in the concentration camp more than sixty years earlier.
Screenwriter and directorStefan Ruzowitzky adapted the book as the screenplay for his Austrian-German co-productionThe Counterfeiters that received aforeign-language Oscar in 2008. Burger checked every draft of the screenplay.[16] Adolf Burger is played by the German actorAugust Diehl. He is one of only two prisoner characters in the film that has an authentic historical name and is not synthesized from several real-life prisoners involved in Operation Bernhard[17](the other is the opera singer, Isaak Plappler who also was still living when the film was made).
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