Dan Burros

Daniel "Dan" Burros (March 5, 1937 — October 31, 1965), was a Jewish American who was a former member of the American Nazi Party. Later, after a falling out with founder George Lincoln Rockwell, Burros became a Kleagle, or recruiter, for the New York State branch of the United Klans of America, one of the most violent Klan groups of the time.
Dan Burros committed suicide on October 31, 1965, hours after his Jewishness was made public. He shot himself in the chest and then the head. At the time, he was reportedly listening to music composed by Richard Wagner.The Believer DVD, "An Interview with Director Henry Bean", 2001
==Childhood==
Daniel Burros was born to George and Esther Sunshine Burros in Queens, New York City. At high school, Dan Burros proved himself to be intelligent (his IQ was measured at 154), and did well in most classes. Burros was not athletic and had poor eyesight. He was intense to the point of paranoia in athletic competition, particularly if he was losing or feared he was losing. He also possessed a fiery temper. This and his intensity frequently led to fights.
==Military service==
Dan Burros expressed a desire to enter the United States Military Academy at West Point (which never came to fruition). However, he enlisted in the National Guard while still in high school and wore his uniform to class on drill days. He enlisted in the United States Army in 1955, but he was later discharged after a series of pseudo-suicide attempts involving the ingestion of large amounts of aspirin and non-fatal cuts on his wrists. He even praised Adolf Hitler in a suicide note. His discharge was ascribed to "... reasons of unsuitability, character, and behavior disorder" From Jew to Jew-hater: the curious life (and death) of Daniel Burros.
==Political activity==
Burros eventually joined the American Nazi Party, which had been founded by George Lincoln Rockwell, an ex-United States Navy pilot who had seen action in both World War II and the Korean War. In the late 1950s, Rockwell adopted a National Socialist philosophy because he felt it was another name for white nationalism. He also stated that he felt guilty that he had killed Germans during the Second World War and came to believe that they had a shared enemy: Jews, a group he accused, among other things, of creating and propagating communism. As a Naval pilot, Rockwell had attained the rank of commander. He retained the title upon founding the American Nazi Party.
Dan Burros' Jewishness had been suspected by a number of fellow American Nazi Party members. Many of Rockwell's stormtroopers distrusted Burros not only for being Jewish, but being a self-hating Jew, and for his bizarre behavior. Burros would sometimes bring knish to the American Nazi Party headquarters and make such outrageous statements as: "Let's eat this good Jew food!" Burros also frequently spent time with Jewish women. In one incident, described in William H. Schmaltz' 1999 book, Hate: George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party, Burros once publicly described a lurid fantasy in which the keys of a piano were modified to deliver electric shocks via wires attached to the Jewish victim of their choice. He believed that the combination of music from the piano and the electric shocks would cause them to convulse in rhythm to the piano and provide entertainment. Another example of Burros' macabre state of mind is the fact that he owned a bar of soap wrapped in paper with the words "made from the finest Jewish fat" imprinted on it.
Another unexplained contradiction in his life was the fact that Dan Burros' name and address appeared in Lee Harvey Oswald's personal notebook. 
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/lofiversion/index.php/t14296.html Kevin Coogan also pointed out that Dan Burros knew Joseph Milteer of the National States' Rights Party very well. Milteer was secretly tape recorded by Willie Somersett, a Miami Police Department Intelligence Division confidential informant, bragging about the upcoming death of John F. Kennedy at a Congress of Freedom meeting. "It is sitting on go right now. He is going to be shot with a rifle from a tall building." After the murder of President Kennedy, Milteer stated to Somersett: "See, I don't do any guessing. The Patriots will be in the clear on this. It will be blamed on a Communist." http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/milteer.htm
==Suicide==
Dan Burros being fully Jewish was a fact which was made public in a New York Times article written by reporter John McCandlish Phillips. Phillips was an evangelical Christian who initially tried to reach out to Burros by bringing up statements which indicated that he felt trapped in the racist movement. However, his attempts were unsuccessful. Not long after the Times issue with the startling revelations of his Jewishness went on sale, Daniel Burros committed suicide.
In a press conference, a morose George Lincoln Rockwell praised Burros' dedication. He took the opportunity to rail against Jews, whom he referred to as "... a unique people with a distinct mass of mental disorders" and ascribed Dan Burros' instability and suicide to "this unfortunate Jewish psychosis".William H. Schmaltz, Hate: George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party, 1999., Pg. 263 Despite the fact that Burros was a Jew and distrusted by his stormtroopers, Rockwell had wished to maintain at least a working relationship with him.
==Analysis of being a Jewish Nazi==
Dan Burros is sometimes cited as an example of a self-hating Jew. He was also influenced by Francis Parker Yockey's Imperium.
The story of Dan Burros was the origin of Henry Bean's movie, The Believer. It also inspired an episode of the TV series Lou Grant.
Dan Burros was not the only Jewish member of the American Nazi Party. Leonard Holstein was the commander of the ANP's Los Angeles unit when it was active and later served the ANP in other capacities.
==References==
*One More Victim: The Life and Death of an American-Jewish Nazi by A. M. Rosenthal and Arthur Gelb (New American Library, 1967)
*Henry Bean, The Believer: Confronting Jewish Self-Hatred. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 2002. ISBN 1-56025-372-X.
==External links==
*Photograph of Dan Burros from the Detroit Free Press
*"From Jew to Jew-hater: the curious life (and death) of Daniel Burros" by William Bryk in New York Press
*"Hate and Hypocrisy" Intelligence Report from the Southern Poverty Law Center
Category:Antisemitism