The Auschwitz survivor Adolf Burger has died in Prague at the age of 99. As a result of his ordeals and his personal history in the Nazi concentration and extermination camps he became one of the world’s most famous witnesses of those times.

After his liberation he made it his mission to inform the world, and especially young people, about the murderous reality of the concentration camps and the criminal greed for money of the Nazi perpetrators.

During a stay in Oswiecim /Auschwitz, the Executive Vice President of the International Auschwitz Committee, Christoph Heubner, paid tribute to Adolf Burger:

"Adolf Burger suffered throughout his lifetime from the imprisonment, the humiliations and his intended murder by the Nazis. As a prisoner forced to work in the counterfeiting workshop at Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp he experienced first-hand the criminal energy of the Nazi perpetrators and their insatiable greed for money and gold.

He confronted the everyday questions and challenges of his memories and his survival with infinite discipline and clarity. He wanted to keep on repeating his accounts of what he had seen, so that he himself might understand what had really happened in Auschwitz and the other camps. He was convinced that a repetition of history could only be prevented by the telling of such eyewitness accounts. This is why it gave him deep satisfaction when the film ‘The Counterfeiters‘, which was based on his story, premiered in 2007 and won an Oscar: ‘So that people will remember all of us’. He also dedicated his books to his fellow prisoners, and he wrote them full of hope: ‘Lest we forget, for the future of humanity’.

The Auschwitz survivors bid farewell to Adolf Burger with deep sorrow and gratitude."