Name Bernhard Kruger | ||
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Bernhard Kr眉ger ( [藞b蓻蕘nha蕘t 藞k蕘y藧伞蓯]; 26 November 1904 鈥 3 January 1989) was a member of the NSDAP, SS Major (Sturmbannf眉hrer) during World War II, and leader of the Department VI F 4a, part of the SD-foreign branch in the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA).
This office of the Nazi Party Security Service (SD) was responsible for, among other things, falsifying passports and documents. Within the setting of Operation Bernhard, the SD forged pound notes in great numbers, funding Nazi Germany with 鈧?00 million in high-quality counterfeit currency (worth approx. $6 billion 2009). This counterfeiting operation was named after Kr眉ger, who led the operation from a segregated factory built at Sachsenhausen concentration camp, manned by 142 Jewish inmates.
The pound counterfeiting operation ended in 1944. However Kr眉ger succeeded in establishing a new operation to forge American dollar notes. In May 1945 his team of prisoners were transferred to Ebensee concentration camp in Austria where they were liberated.
One of the forgers, Adolf Burger survived the war and stated that "Major Kr眉ger was in no way like Oskar Schindler. He was a murderer just like everyone else, six weeks before the war ended he had six people shot just because they were sick. He couldn't send them to hospital in case they said something about the operation, so he killed them."
After the war, Major Kr眉ger was detained by the British for two years, then turned over to the French for a year. He said they asked him to forge documents but that he refused. He was released in 1948 without any charges being pressed, and returned to Germany. In the 1950s, he went before a denazification court, where inmates under his charge at Sachsenhausen provided statements that resulted in his acquittal. He eventually worked for the company that had produced the special paper for the Operation Bernhard forgeries. He died in 1989.