Dan Burros

Daniel "Dan" Burros (March 5, 1937 &mdash; 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 suffered from mental instability, and this led to his suicide on October 31, 1965, hours after his Jewish heritage 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.

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".

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' Jewish heritage 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 also 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.

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 Jewish heritage 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". 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.