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Adolf Burger, forced by Nazis to counterfeit, dies at 99

By Andrew V. Pestano
Adolf Burger, seen here in the Czech Republic in 2007, has died at the age of 99 in Prague, his family said. Burger, a Slovakian typographer, was forced by the Nazis during World War II to counterfeit British banknotes in attempts to destabilize the British economy. File Photo by European Pressphoto Agency
Adolf Burger, seen here in the Czech Republic in 2007, has died at the age of 99 in Prague, his family said. Burger, a Slovakian typographer, was forced by the Nazis during World War II to counterfeit British banknotes in attempts to destabilize the British economy. File Photo by European Pressphoto Agency

PRAGUE, Czech Republic, Dec. 8 (UPI) -- Adolf Burger, a Slovakian typographer who survived the Holocaust forced by Nazis to counterfeit British banknotes during the Second World War, has died at the age of 99, his family said.

Burger was arrested in 1942 for producing false baptism records for Jews who were scheduled to be transported to local Nazi extermination camps or deported to Auschwitz.

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In 1944, the Nazi occupation forced Burger to take part in Operation Bernhard -- an effort to destabilize the British economy by flooding the country with fake banknotes. He worked in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

Burger was liberated by the U.S. Army in 1945. He settled in Prague after the war.

"I thought somehow I would survive Auschwitz, but was sure I was a dead man in Sachsenhausen. The Nazis planned to kill us so we would never tell anyone what they were doing," Burger told JTA in 2008.

The 2007 Austrian-German film The Counterfeiters, which won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, was based on Burger's memoir Die Fälscher, which detailed Operation Bernhard.

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