“The Counterfeiters” – A survivor’s tale you’ve never seen before

An epic tale of ultimate temptation during the Second World War, “The Counterfeiters” recounts a real-life diabolical Nazi plot that exploited the expertise of a group of concentration camp inmates.

The scheme involved toppling foreign economies and fueling the German war effort with hoards of counterfeit pounds and dollars. The men forced to craft all that money were imprisoned Jews who just happened to be bankers, printers and a few professional forgers. In return, they were offered the chance to live the high life while their fellow prisoners starved.

Winner of this year’s Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, it sets a compelling moral dilemma around the story of a prisoner-run counterfeiting ring.

Though based on the memoirs of Adolf Burger (August Diehl), the film is told as the reminiscences of gaunt yet spirited Salomon “Sally” Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics), who looks back on the Second World War while on a gambling binge at Monte Carlo. In the Weimar era, he was a libertine living the good life thanks to his considerable counterfeiting abilities, but he was eventually arrested by police inspector Herzog (Devid Striesow) and sent to the Mauthausen concentration camp.
Always looking out for number one, Sorowitsch keeps his nose clean and even becomes the camp’s resident artist. Years later, he is unceremoniously sent to Sachsenhausen, where Herzog announces that he is to forge bills for the financial gain of the Third Reich as part of “Operation Bernhard.”

They are given privileges that the rest of the camp lacks, but if they do not produce perfect replicas, they will be executed. Having a conscience thus carries a high price, but is survival really the ultimate goal when others will die by their hands?

The battle of wits between Herzog and the counterfeiters – particularly Sorowitsch, who is always game for a challenge – is thoroughly absorbing. The film expertly captures the period through director Stefan Ruzowitzky’s careful attention to detail inside the camp.

While there are moments of harsh violence, much of the daily degradation of their fellow Jews is only within the spoiled forgers’ earshot, invisible outside their private barracks. Never stuffy or melodramatic, the film charts the toll that their morally compromised position inevitably takes with a vigorous energy.