Adolf Burger

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Adolf Burger, Paris, January 2008

Adolf Burger (born August 12, 1917 in Großlomnitz , Austria-Hungary , today Slovakia ; † December 6, 2016 in Prague ) was a book printer and Holocaust survivor, who as a Jewish prisoner played an important role as a forger in the Bernhard company in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp played.

Life

Burger was born into a Jewish family in the mountain village Veľká Lomnica at the foot of the High Tatras . After the father's death, the mother and her four children moved to Poprad . Burger did an apprenticeship as a printer. In 1934 he was active in the left-wing socialist Jewish Hashomer Hatzair during the holidays . After the journeyman's examination, Burger was drafted into the Czechoslovak Army in 1937 , from which he was dismissed as a Jew in 1939 after the establishment of the First Slovak Republic . He was sent to a labor camp in Levoča for half a year , after which he worked in a printing company in Bratislava . There he came into contact with the resistance movement. He printed baptismal certificates for Jews and thus saved many lives. It was there that he met his future wife Gisela.

In August 1942 he and his wife were arrested separately by the Slovak Gestapo in Bratislava because of their illegal activities ; They met again briefly in the Žilina concentration camp . Adolf was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp , where he received prisoner no. 64401 received. Gisela was murdered in the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp .

As a trained printer and typesetter, Adolf Burger was sent to the forgery workshop (Blocks 18 and 19) of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin two years later on the orders of the SS security service , where large quantities of British pound notes, Yugoslav partisan money, Soviet ID cards and Brazilian ones were sold , British and American passports, pay books, postage stamps and form letters, such as those of the Palestine Office in Geneva, were forged. The top secret mission, which was operated by Bernhard Krüger under the code name Enterprise Bernhard , was ordered by Himmler and approved by Hitler .

Before the approaching Allies, at the end of the war, the forgery workshop was first relocated to Mauthausen and then to the Ebensee concentration camp  - a satellite camp of Mauthausen  . Burger was liberated there on May 6, 1945 by soldiers of the 3rd US Army . He returned to Czechoslovakia and reached Prague on May 20, 1945 . In his hometown of Poprad, he learned that his mother had been deported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp four months before the end of the war and his stepfather had been deported to Sachsenhausen and murdered.

After the war, Adolf Burger returned to work as a printer in Prague.

As a representative of the Czech Sachsenhausen prisoners, he was Vice President of the International Sachsenhausen Committee and was also involved in the Auschwitz Committee.

As a contemporary witness he attended schools and spoke to more than 90,000 young people well into old age. Quite a few of these events were co-organized by the Else-Lasker-Schüler-Gesellschaft , of which Burger was an honorary member from February 28, 2008 and remained until his death.

Adolf Burger between the actors Karl Markovics and August Diehl at the premiere of the film Die Fälscher at the Berlinale 2007

The film "The Forgers"

In 2006 the feature film Die Fälscher was shot. The script is based on Adolf Burger's memories of his time in Sachsenhausen, directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky . The film with August Diehl in the role of Adolf Burger premiered in 2007 in the competition of the Berlinale . It was released in cinemas in Germany and Austria in March 2007 and won  the award in the “ Best Foreign Language Film ” category at the 80th Academy Awards in February 2008 - the first ever Austrian film .

Fonts

  • Číslo 64401 mluví . Podle vyprávění Adolfa Burgra napsali Sylva a Oskar Krejčí, cover by Lev Haas , Gustav Petrů, Praha 1945, OCLC 85413815 ( number 64401 speaks , enclosures with b / w photos from Ebensee , which were taken shortly after the liberation, Czech).
  • Company Bernhard. The forgery workshop in Sachsenhausen concentration camp (= German history series , Volume 82). Edition Hentrich, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-89468-056-3 .
  • The devil's workshop. The largest counterfeiting campaign in world history. Autobiography 1942–1945 and experience report, New Life, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-555-01486-9 (extended edition of: Company Bernhard , 1992).
  • The devil's workshop. The counterfeiting workshop in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Hentrich & Hentrich, Teetz 2005, ISBN 3-933471-80-X (reprint of the 1999 edition with the same text).

literature

Web links

Commons : Adolf Burger  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Adam Hájek: The last witness. Adolf Burger had to forge money for the Nazis during the Shoah. Now he has died in Prague . www.juedische-allgemeine.de, December 8, 2016, accessed December 8, 2016
  2. ↑ a b Company Bernhard. Berlin 1992, pp. 11-15
  3. ↑ a b c d Roland Lampe: "... I stopped by Hempel": In the footsteps of known and unknown authors in Oranienburg. Tredition, Hamburg 2016, ISBN 978-3-7345-3218-4 , p. 51 f.
  4. ^ Nikolaus Wachsmann: KL: the history of the National Socialist concentration camps. Siedler, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-88680-827-4 , p. 338
  5. ^ Andreas Austilat : War of the Notes . Der Tagesspiegel , February 5, 2007, accessed on December 9, 2016.
  6. ^ Honorary members of the Else Lasker-Schüler-Gesellschaft
  7. ↑ Isabella Reicher: "I was not a hero". A conversation with Adolf Burger, the concentration camp inmate whose descriptions formed the basis of the film “The Forgers”. Der Standard , February 12, 2007, accessed December 9, 2016.
  8. ↑ The counterfeiters . Film data sheet of the Berlinale 2007, accessed on December 9, 2016 (pdf; 257 kB).
personal data
SURNAME Burger, Adolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Slovak printer, Nazi victims, Sachsenhausen concentration camp, Aktion Bernhard
DATE OF BIRTH August 12, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Veľká Lomnica
DATE OF DEATH December 6, 2016
Place of death Prague