Dan Burros
Dan Burros | |
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Suicide by gunshot | |
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Other political affiliations | Ku Klux Klan (1965) |
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Daniel Burros (March 5, 1937 – October 31, 1965) was an American
Born to a
In 1965, Burros was recruited into the Ku Klux Klan by
Early life
Daniel Burros was born March 5, 1937, to George and Esther Burros (
Burros was an only child, and shortly after his birth, his parents moved to
Burros attended
Military career
Burros claimed that he tried to apply to West Point but was rejected due to poor eyesight; however, there is no evidence he ever tried to apply.
While initially pleased with the army, after some time it started to disappoint him. He was seen as a misfit, and did not receive the respect he desired.
Political activity
Burros may have studied under a fake name at the Manhattan School of Printing in the summer of 1958. He began work July 10, 1958 for the Queens Public Library, operating office machines and printing cataloguing cards. He had a reputation as a good worker, but would talk about neo-Nazi topics to his coworkers at length. This lasted for a year and a half before he quit in January 1960 over a printing dispute. Soon after he found work operating a multigraph for the U.S. Navigation Company.[3][32]
Burros began expressing an interest in
American Nazi Party (1960–1961)

In June 1960, Burros joined the American Nazi Party and moved from New York City to their headquarters in Arlington County, Virginia.[34][40][41] According to the recollection of the party's leader, George Lincoln Rockwell, Burros had made contact with the party in 1960, first contacting James K. Warner. He was especially interested in the Nazi uniforms, and claimed on the application form that he was ethnically German.[41] He was accepted and took the "Trooper's Oath".[40] At the same time, he found work at the United States Chamber of Commerce operating a multilith.[22][40][42] Burros was accepted quickly into the group, willing to donate large amounts of time and money to the party.[43] His heritage was unknown in the ANP, but some members were suspicious of him, and he was occasionally teased for supposedly looking Jewish.[44][45] Burros claimed he had learned Hebrew to better "investigate the enemy".[46] ANP member Matt Koehl later said Burros had not looked Jewish and said Burros probably had some amount of "Aryan blood".[47]
Rockwell appreciated Burros, impressed by his fervent Nazism and artistic and mechanical skills; he was seen as too fanatical, but unlike many prospective members, had valuable skills.
Burros was known for his especially violent
In 1960, American Nazi Party security officer Roger Foss conducted

On July 3, 1960, after a fight at a Rockwell speech, several ANP members, including Rockwell and Burros, and their opponents, were arrested for disorderly conduct. Due to the subsequent legal proceedings, Rockwell was
The Chamber of Commerce fired Burros over his ANP membership in February 1961. In response, Burros got some of the other troopers to picket the building.
American National Party (1962)

In late 1961, Burros and Patler began to question Rockwell's leadership.[70] They were causing unity problems, due to what Rockwell biographer William H. Schmaltz described as their "continual scheming", constantly accusing other members of being spies for the Jews.[71] Roger Foss grew to dislike the pair, who got Foss demoted over a disciplinary infraction, leading to him leaving headquarters.[72] Burros and Patler had also edited the Official Stormtrooper's Manual in a manner Rockwell viewed as self-promotional.[34][73] Burros and Patler left without notice November 5, 1961 and moved to New York.[70]
In New York, they launched a magazine called Kill! which was "dedicated to the annihilation of the enemies of the White people".[34] Its first issue was published in July 1962, edited by Burros.[39][74] The magazine was an outlet for attacking other members of the movement, and was described by Jeffrey Kaplan as "viciously racist and anti-Semitic".[30][73] The first issue of Kill! displays on its back a noose and the words "Impeach the Traitor John F. Kennedy for Giving Aid and Comfort to the Enemies of the U.S.A."; the same issue also featured a Burros-written editorial entitled "The Importance of Killing".[74][75] He attacked Rockwell in the magazine, saying that "without the swastika, Rockwell would be nothing" and calling him a "nigger loving liberal".[76]
Alongside Kill! the two founded their own splinter group, the American National Party.[73][77] Patler was the national chairman and Burros was their national vice chairman.[39][78] Their party was functionally a duplicate of the American Nazi Party, and never had more than a few members.[53][79] They were so poor that they could not afford Nazi uniforms, disappointing Burros, and although they picketed leftist meetings and movie theaters, they received little attention.[78][80] At the time, Burros worked at a Jewish-owned printing company, and did not discuss his views while at work. He spent his time collecting Nazi memorabilia.[78] Burros informed on members of other extremist groups in New York to the police, information which was rarely helpful.[39][81] Despite the risk of it outing him as Jewish, he often visited his parents in the neighborhood where he was recognized as Jewish. He expressed regret that his views hurt his parents to Roy Frankhouser but said it was "for the best someday".[82] The American National Party dissolved about a year later and the magazine ended after four issues, when Patler and Burros had a falling out.[79][83] When Patler was arrested and jailed for picketing a rally, he started a hunger strike in prison, and was angered when Burros did not provide sufficient support. He was also annoyed when Burros decided to watch football instead of picketing Eleanor Roosevelt's funeral with him. Burros ultimately stayed in New York and Patler returned to the American Nazi Party.[79][83] Patler later murdered Rockwell in 1967.[39]
National Renaissance Party (1963–1964)

Now without a group, Burros spent his time giving speeches on street corners and reading literature.[84] He was especially interested in Francis Parker Yockey's book Imperium which he read repeatedly and called "the Bible of the American right-wing".[39][50][85] He joined the neo-Nazi National Renaissance Party in early 1963.[34] The leader of the party, neo-Nazi James H. Madole, was also interested in Yockey; while he hated Rockwell, he had many of the same views. Impressed by Burros's ideological fervor, he promoted him to the party's high-ranking Security Echelon. However, he did not trust him, worrying he was a spy for Rockwell.[39][86] Burros wrote for the group's National Renaissance Bulletin.[87] The NRP members saw themselves as more sophisticated racists than the American Nazi Party, and at times found Burros's extreme views embarrassing, but nevertheless found him useful.[88] He was also the editor of a magazine, The International Nazi Fascist, sometimes just the Nazi Fascist and later renamed The Free American, which became popular with neo-Nazis.[89][90]
During the investigation into the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy, it was found that Lee Harvey Oswald had Burros and Rockwell in his address book.[50][85] This is printed in exhibit Volume XVI of the Warren Commission. They are the only far-right figures in his address book.[85] This is likely due to a communist publication incorrectly linking Burros's American National Party to Rockwell's, misinterpreting the news of its foundation as Rockwell relocating to Queens, leading Oswald to think Burros's group was Rockwell's.[77] Following the assassination, Burros wore a button emblazoned "Lee Harvey Oswald Fan Club".[50][83]
In July 1963, Burros and other NRP members were jailed after getting into a fight with
Burros grew to dislike Madole and debated rejoining Rockwell's party, but never did. Burros disliked the NRP for, in his view, being only talk.
Ku Klux Klan (1965)

After leaving the NRP, Burros became frustrated, feeling that the racist movement was not reaching people and or achieving its goals. He attributed this to a lack of leadership; he desired a group with many people and a leader.[95] In 1965, at the Museum of Modern Art, Burros watched the 1915 film The Birth of a Nation, a propaganda film for the Ku Klux Klan; after he saw it, Burros became preoccupied with the film and the Klan, seeing it as similar to Nazism and the actual organization he desired.[39][95] Initially Burros saw the Klan as a dead movement, which saddened him, but former American Nazi Party associate and Klan organizer Roy Frankhouser, with whom he had reconnected after leaving the ANP, recruited him into the United Klans of America.[39][96]
Frankhouser invited Burros to a Klan meeting in
Burros was very enthusiastic about the KKK.
Reveal of Jewish heritage and suicide

On October 19, 1965, Burros was listed among prominent Klansmen in an article in the
After discovering evidence of his bar mitzvah and Jewish schooling, Phillips tried and failed to contact Burros.[34][98] Burros went back to New York on October 27 to pick up his new Klan robes and to visit Carol.[113] On October 29, Phillips saw Burros outside his apartment and followed him into a barbershop.[34][98] Burros did not agree to a formal interview but agreed to have a conversation. Phillips went through the details of his military and political career, impressing Burros, before revealing he knew that Burros was Jewish.[114] Burros said that revealing this publicly would ruin his life and threatened to kill Phillips if he published the information.[115] After the interview, Burros called the paper three times throughout the day threatening Phillips and begging him to not print the story. At one point he offered to trade the story of his ancestry for another, which Phillips rejected.[98][116][117] In his last call, Burros said he accepted he could not prevent the story from being published, but that he would "go out in a blaze of glory", implying that he was going to shoot up The New York Times headquarters. In response the police were called and Phillips was given a bodyguard.[116][118]
Late in the day on October 29, Burros returned to Frankhouser's home. He said that he admired Phillips's research, but that the journalist had "found out something that I just can't live with"; he claimed that this was his Odinist beliefs, which would hurt the Christian-only Klan. Once there he paced throughout the house and threatened to blow up the House Committee and the Times, repeatedly saying he had to kill Phillips and himself. This terrified Frankhouser, who with other Klansmen present tried to calm him and locked up a gun he was carrying.[119] Frankhouser told Burros that he wouldn't care if he was Jewish; Burros had no response.[120]
The Times held the story until more proof was provided. On October 31, they obtained records of his bar mitzvah.[116][119] The article, entitled "State Klan Leader Hides Secret of Jewish Origin", ran on the front page that day.[111][121] After reading the article, Burros said he would kill himself, and was confronted by the other members of the house. He destroyed several pieces of furniture while trying to locate a gun, before finding his own, which had been left on a dresser.[116][122] Burros said "Long live the white race. I've got nothing more to live for", before he shot himself in the chest. Still standing, he shot himself again in the head.[123][124] He was 28.[124] Burros was cremated at the request of his parents, and his ashes were buried in Reading. After his death, Frankhouser apologized to Burros's parents.[125]
There were at least three eyewitnesses to the suicide, all of whom gave near identical testimonies, and the forensic evidence (e.g. Burros was the only person with powder marks on his hand) supported this, leading to suicide being the coroner's determination.
Legacy

Burros's suicide was a national news story for several weeks.
Rockwell eulogized Burros in his periodicals The Rockwell Report and The Stormtrooper. He praised Burros's dedication, saying that Burros had been "steeped in racist revolutionary causes" and through suicide had "ended his miserably sad life of lies". Rockwell took the opportunity to rail against Jews, whom he referred to as "a unique people with a distinct mass of mental disorders" and ascribed Burros's instability and suicide to the "unfortunate Jewish psychosis" which "cost him his life".[55][124][136] Privately, Rockwell was saddened by Burros's death; he described him as a "righteous Jew" and "brilliant young man", and believed that had he lived he could have continued to work for them in some capacity anyway.[47] He did wonder how Burros could have failed to predict that people would find out about his ethnic background.[30] In this eulogy, Rockwell wrote:[137]
Burros hated himself and his Jewishness, and went a step further, planning to MURDER them all.
It killed him.
The reveal of Burros's background was bad publicity for Madole, as a former member of his party.[138] In response to Burros's suicide, Madole wrote an article for the National Renaissance Bulletin entitled "The Historical and Metaphysical Roots of the Conflict between Jew and Gentile", where he defended Burros as a genuine Nazi despite his ethnicity, and praised him for a willingness to "blast himself into oblivion as final proof of his loyalty."[34][139][140] Following the suicide, another member of the NRP and Burros associate, Robert Burros (no relation) admitted to the party he was half Jewish through his father. Initially he was criticized, but he was allowed to stay because he had "abandoned all mental and spiritual ties with the Jewish Community at the age of thirteen".[141] The Klan eulogized him as a "good Jew" for abandoning his Jewishness,[131] and Klansmen burned a cross in his honor in Rising Sun, Maryland a week after his death.[34] Frankhouser refused to disavow Burros.[142]
Following Burros's death, Rosenthal and Arthur Gelb wrote the biography One More Victim, which follows his life from his family origins to his becoming a neo-Nazi.[132][137] Burros's life and suicide inspired the 2001 film The Believer, which follows a Jewish neo-Nazi skinhead named Daniel.[143] American publisher and neo-Nazi sympathizer Adam Parfrey had an interest in Burros; he republished Burros's Kill! magazine editorial "The Importance of Killing" in his 1987 book Apocalypse Culture. Parfrey, himself of Jewish descent, blamed Jews for Burros becoming a neo-Nazi.[144] Academic Jeffrey Kaplan described Burros as perhaps "one of the most tragic yet instructive cautionary tales to arise out of American National Socialism".[55]
References
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- ^ Talese 2007, p. 366.
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Works cited
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- Coogan, Kevin (1999). Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International. Brooklyn: ISBN 978-1-57027-039-0.
- Eisenberg, Dennis (1967). The Re-Emergence of Fascism. London: MacGibbon & Kee.
- George, John; ISBN 978-0-87975-680-2.
- Grist, Leighton (2018). Fascism and Millennial American Cinema. SpringerLink Bücher. London: ISBN 978-1-137-59566-9.
- Guinn, Jeff (2017). The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple. New York: ISBN 978-1-4767-6382-8.
- ISBN 978-0-7425-0340-3.
- ISSN 0031-322X.
- Kellman, George (1963). "Anti-Jewish Agitation". JSTOR 23603682.
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- Phillips, David P. (1974). "The Influence of Suggestion on Suicide: Substantive and Theoretical Implications of the Werther Effect". JSTOR 2094294.
- Rosenthal, A. M.; Gelb, Arthur (1968) [1967]. One More Victim: The Life and Death of an American-Jewish Nazi (Reprint ed.). New York: New American Library.
- Schmaltz, William H. (2000) [1999]. Hate: George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party. Washington, D.C.: ISBN 978-1-57488-262-9.
- Simonelli, Frederick J. (1999). American Fuehrer: George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party. Urbana: ISBN 978-0-252-02285-2.
- ISBN 978-0-429-57601-0.
- ISBN 978-0-8129-7768-4.