December 2022 MBR The Holocaust Studies Shelf

The Holocaust Studies Shelf

The Devil's Workshop
Adolf Burger
Frontline Books
c/o Pen & Sword Books
www.casematepublishers.com
https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk
9781399019156, $26.95, PB, 296pp

https://www.amazon.com/Devils-Workshop-Memoir-Counterfeiting-Operation/dp/1399019155

Synopsis: One of the most remarkable episodes of the Second World War was the German attempt to forge currency and trigger the economic collapse of the Allies. The counterfeit operation was one of the largest the world has ever seen and lead to the post-war reissue of sterling.

At the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin, Jewish prisoners of 13 different nationalities were forced to work on producing counterfeit pound and dollar notes worth billions. The plan was known as Operation Bernhard.

The forgeries that were produced were virtually undetectable. Only the most senior forgers were able to spot the fakes -- even staff at the Bank of England failed to do so.

"The Devil's Workshop: A Memoir of the Nazi Counterfeiting Operation" is an extraordinary memoir in which the sole surviving Czech counterfeiter, Adolf Burger (12 August 1917 - 6 December 2016), describes his wartime experiences. He recounts the harrowing facts surrounding the murder of his wife Gizela in Auschwitz, as well as his own time as a prisoner in four concentration camps. He was working as a counterfeiter until his liberation from a concentration camp at Ebensee on 5 May 1945.

Supported by hitherto unseen documentation and photographs that Burger took of his fellow prisoners after the war, this is a shocking account which sheds fresh light on the calculated barbarity of the Nazi war machine.

Critique: An invaluable and singular contribution to the growing body of World War II History/Biography collections, "The Devil's Workshop: A Memoir of the Nazi Counterfeiting Operation" is an essential, important, and unreservedly recommended addition to personal, professional, community, and academic library Holocaust and World War II History collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists.

Editorial Note: Currently residing in Prague, Adolf Burger was born in Slovakia in 1917. He was arrested in August 1942 together with his wife and both were sent to Auschwitz. Burger was transferred to the forgery workshop at Sachsenhausen in Berlin in 1944. He is one of the last surviving witnesses of the Nazi counterfeiting operation and was a consultant for the film The Counterfeiters, winner of the 2008 Foreign Language Oscar. His memoir 'The Devil's Workshop' has been published in Hungarian, Persian, Japanese and Czech. He continues to travel to speak about his wartime experiences. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Burger)

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