Daniel Burros (March 5, 1937 – October 31, 1965) was an American neo-Nazi affiliated with several far-right organizations. Burros was once the third highest-ranking member of the American Nazi Party, and later a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in New York. Within the far-right movement, Burros was known for the severity of his antisemitism. He edited several neo-Nazi periodicals and publications, including his newspaper The Free American, which became popular with fascists internationally. When The New York Times published an article revealing that he was Jewish, Burros killed himself.
Born to a Russian Jewish family in the Bronx, Burros was enrolled in Hebrew school in Richmond Hill, Queens, where his was held. He became antisemitic as a teenager. After serving in the Army for several years, he was discharged under honorable conditions in 1958 and joined the American Nazi Party in 1960. Burros left the party the next year alongside his close friend John Patler. Patler and Burros founded a splinter group, the American National Party, along with their Kill! magazine, in New York. Soon after they had a falling-out, their group and magazine failed, and Patler returned to the American Nazi Party. Influenced by fascist ideologue Francis Parker Yockey's book Imperium, Burros joined James H. Madole's neo-Nazi National Renaissance Party in 1963. After a dispute with Madole, he left the group and became an Odinist.
In 1965, Burros was recruited into the Ku Klux Klan by Roy Frankhouser and quickly became the King Kleagle and the Grand Dragon of the New York chapter of the Ku Klux Klan's United Klans of America. On October 31, 1965, his Jewish heritage was exposed to the public by journalist McCandlish Phillips, who published an article about Burros in The New York Times. Some hours after the article was published, Burros fatally shot himself in Frankhouser's home. His suicide was widely publicized; The New York Times received both criticism and praise for running the story. A biography of Burros, One More Victim, was written by A. M. Rosenthal and Arthur Gelb in 1967, and his life was the basis for the 2001 film The Believer.
Early life Daniel Burros was born March 5, 1937, to George and Esther Burros (), both children of Russian Jewish immigrants, at Lebanon Hospital in the Bronx, New York. George Burros enlisted in the United States Navy and served during World War I, where he received a disabling wound. He could work only occasionally as a machinist and so relied largely on his pension. He did not regularly attend synagogue and, according to Esther, was not very interested in Judaism. Esther, who had immigrated from Russia aged two, worked occasionally as a saleswoman; unlike her husband, she was a devout Jew. They were married by a rabbi in the Bronx on May 31, 1936.
Burros was an only child, and shortly after his birth, his parents moved to Richmond Hill, Queens, to be closer to his paternal relatives. When his paternal grandparents died some years later, Burros and his parents withdrew from the wider family and family gatherings. His mother enrolled him in Hebrew school at the Orthodox synagogue Talmud Torah in Richmond Hill, where his (the coming of age ritual in Judaism) was held. Unlike most of the other boys in his class, he continued to come to synagogue afterwards. Burros later said his family had pressured him into being religiously devoted. It did not last; when his rabbi accepted a larger congregation elsewhere in New York, Burros, hurt, cut back on attendance. He had high grades in junior high school but became rebellious and often sought out fights. Fascinated by soldiers, he aimed to get into the United States Military Academy at West Point. Some of his friends knew he was Jewish, but others assumed he was Christian. He began to claim he was actually German-American and not Jewish; in one incident in 8th grade, he bragged about how having blond hair made him look "Aryan".
Burros attended John Adams High School in Queens, where he did well academically; testing showed his IQ was in the 130s. He failed one course, Hebrew, telling the others in the class that he preferred German. A classmate recalled this class as easy and suspected Burros had failed it intentionally. Garnering a reputation as a hardline right-winger, he was reported for behavioral problems several times. A McCarthyite teacher politically influenced him. Burros became fascinated by and began to collect German war materials and paraphernalia, though in his first two years of high school this was initially not Nazi-related. By his junior year of high school, he displayed pictures of Nazi military officials in his room and argued Nazi Germany was misunderstood. In 1954, he called a Jewish friend of his a "Jew bastard", after which they never spoke again; this was, to his friends' knowledge, the first antisemitic thing he had said. Afterwards, his collection became increasingly Nazi-focused. He graduated in June 1955. Despite having good grades and having done several extra credit summer courses, he did not apply for admission to any college. He later told his friends that college was for Jews.
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. Burros enlisted in the National Guard in his senior year of high school on August 12, 1954, joining the Company I, 165th Infantry Regiment. By May of the next year he qualified as a marksman. He was discharged from the Guard in August 1955 to join the United States Army, enlisting on August 18 for a six year term. He initially served in the 364th Infantry Regiment, then the 187th Airborne Infantry Regiment and finally the 327th Infantry Regiment, at, successively, Fort Dix, Fort Bragg, and Fort Campbell. Burros was one of the soldiers who forcibly integrated Little Rock Central High School in September 1957. At the time, he wrote in a letter describing this experience as "the first time [he] really [felt] like a soldier", but later sent letters saying he hated the incident.
His initial satisfaction with the army soon turned to disappointment. He was seen as a misfit, and did not receive the respect he desired. In what was probably an attempt to get out of the military, he ingested twenty aspirin (not a fatal dose) and shallowly cut his wrist. With it, he penned a suicide note, in which he said he wished for the revival of Nazism but considered the current situation "hopeless" and that with his death he "[goes] to my Führer Hitler, Der Grosse in the Third Reich that endures forever". The note ended "Heil Hitler". As a result, he was sent to a psychiatrist in the Army. Burros was declared emotionally immature, but not insane or legitimately suicidal. Several years later Burros claimed instead that he had undergone psychological treatment while serving for "sadistic tendencies and Nazi leanings", after he strangled an eagle. He was discharged under honorable conditions on March 14, 1958, less than an honorable discharge, which was ascribed to "reasons of unsuitability, character, and behavior disorder". Afterwards, he initially claimed that the army let him out after three years, and that he had decided to go due to personal factors. He later claimed he left the army in disgust after Little Rock.
Political activity Burros may have studied under a fake name at the Manhattan School of Printing in mid-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; Burros refused to obey his boss's instructions for how to handle catalog cards. Soon after he found work operating a multigraph for the U.S. Navigation Company.
Burros began expressing an interest in neo-Nazi activism in December 1958 and contacted several neo-Nazi groups. He signed his letters with a red swastika and the name of the American National Socialist Party; he was the sole member of the supposed organization. He collected Nazi paraphernalia and often drew detailed art of Jews dying. By this time, the police had taken notice of his extremist views. Burros became a known figure among the letter-sending Nazi underground, and through correspondence came into contact with several German ex-military officers. He donated money to racist causes, including avowed racist John Kasper, who sent the money back as he considered Burros too pro-Nazi. He was briefly a member of the British National Party in early 1960, receiving a membership card.
American Nazi Party (1960–1961)
In June 1960, Burros joined the American Nazi Party (ANP) and moved from New York City to their headquarters in Arlington County, Virginia. The party's leader, George Lincoln Rockwell, recalled that 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. He was accepted and took the "Trooper's Oath". At the same time, he found work at the United States Chamber of Commerce operating a multilith, a kind of printing press. Burros was accepted quickly into the group, willing to donate large amounts of time and money to the party. He claimed he had learned Hebrew to better "investigate the enemy". His heritage was unknown in the ANP, but some members were suspicious of him, and he was occasionally teased for supposedly looking Jewish. Some members may have known the truth. ANP member Matt Koehl later said Burros had not looked Jewish and said Burros probably had some amount of "Aryan blood".
Rockwell appreciated Burros, impressed by his fervent Nazism and artistic and mechanical skills; he was seen by Rockwell as too fanatical, but unlike many prospective members, had valuable skills. Burros was active in the ANP's public demonstrations and picketings, being convicted several times for use of profane language and fights. Burros worked as the ANP's printer for their propaganda, including bumper stickers and antisemitic soap wrappers, largely sold through mail-order in the National Socialist Bulletin magazine. One of the items of merchandise printed by Burros was the "Jew Pass" (which was to be given to a Jew who would be last in line for the gas chamber). In one instance, a Jewish teenager from Arlington arrived at their headquarters and said he wanted to join the party. Several ANP members, including Rockwell, thought it would be a good publicity stunt to allow it, but Burros was staunchly opposed to any Jews joining the party.
Burros was known for his especially violent antisemitism, to a degree author Kevin Coogan called "almost psychotic". It sometimes embarrassed his compatriots, and at times disgusted other members of the group, particularly due to his torture fantasies. Burros carried a bar of soap labeled "Made from the finest Jewish fat", and often talked about creating torture devices to use on Jews. A specific, favorite fantasy of Burros involved the keys of a piano being modified to deliver electric shocks via wires attached to the Jewish victim of their choice, which the torturer would play to make the victim scream in different keys. He expressed contempt for Christianity as a "doctrine of weakness" and talked of a "Nordic religion". After several neo-Nazis complained the ANP members were worse fed than the party dog, Gas Chamber, Burros suggested that they eat him, which some members believed was a genuine threat.