A 28-year-old New York man who is Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in charge of New York State, former national secretary of the American Nazi Party, and at one time or another a member of at least four Fascist groups advocating extreme racism against Jews and Negroes, was revealed by the New York Times today to be a Jew himself.
The man is Daniel Burros, among whose other activities is that of publisher of a paper called “The Free American,” which calls itself “the battle organ of racial Fascism.” The paper has referred to Hitler as the “sacred leader,” asserting that “the work begun by the Master will continue to a victorious conclusion.”
The New York Times disclosed that Burros’ parents, George Burros, now 71, and the former Esther Sunshine, now 62, were married by a cantor in The Bronx in 1936. The boy, Daniel, was a “star pupil” at the Congregation Talmud Torah, in the borough of Queens, where he became bar mitzvah in the congregation’s synagogue. After study at the John Adams High School, where he was an honor pupil with a high I.Q, he served two years in the army as a paratrooper. He had tried to enroll in the U.S. Military Academy at West Point but was not admitted.
Among the Fascist groups to which Daniel Burros has belonged at one time or another, in addition to the KKK and the American Nazi Party, have been, the Times reported, the National Renaissance Party and the British National Party. The newspaper stated that he carries now a card identifying him as a “special agent of the Invisible Empire” of the Klan. He was reported to have been arrested and convicted four times for extremist activities in Washington and in New York.
The Times quoted Burros as saying to a reporter who questioned Burros about his Jewish background, as saying: “If you publish this, I’ll come and get you, and I’ll kill you. I don’t care what happens, I’ll be ruined. This is all I’ve got to live for.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
