THE
COUNTERFEITERS
by Howard Schumann
Cooperating with the enemy has been explored in other
holocaust films such as Kapo and The
Grey Zone, but the struggle between survival and conscience
has rarely been more clearly drawn than in The Counterfeiters,
the Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film. Based on the memoir “The
Devil’s Workshop” by Adolf Burger, one of the survivors
of the program, The Counterfeiters is the story of Operation
Bernhard, a little known World War II program engineered by the Nazis
to use Jewish prisoners to subvert the currencies of the U.S. and the
U.K through forgery. One of the biggest scams of the war, the counterfeiting
operation printed over 130 million pounds sterling in its attempt to
destabilize the allied cause and help the sinking German economy.
Director
Stefan Ruzowitsky lets us know immediately that counterfeiter Saloman
Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics), known as Sally, has survived the war. A
career criminal who has learned the law of survival, Sally has said,
"Why earn money by making art? Earning money by making money is
much easier." With a briefcase filled with bank notes (authentic
or otherwise), he is seen playing roulette at a swank Monte Carlo resort.
Not given away by his pallid complexion and the deadness in his eyes,
Sally’s history is revealed when a bar girl sees the concentration
camp number on his arm. The film then flashes back to 1936 when the
forger is arrested by Police Inspector Friederich Herzog (David Striesow)
and sent to Mauthausen concentration camp where he must wear prison
stripes with a green Star of David showing that he is both a Jew and
a criminal.
When
the Nazis learn of his abilities as a forger, he is transferred to Sachsenhausen.
Here, under the command of Herzog, now an SS-Sturmbannfuhrer, he is
placed in an elite unit of imprisoned Jewish printers, photographers,
and graphic artists to work on the top-secret campaign to print millions
of counterfeit pounds and U.S. dollars. Given enough food to eat and
a comfortable bed to sleep on, the work crew goes about their business
while listening to the screams of other prisoners, who are forced to
walk in pointless circles just beyond their wall of safety. Pressed
by Herzog to produce the perfect American dollar, Sally is constantly
subverted by the Communist printer Adolf Burger (August Diehl), whose
wife has been shipped to another camp. Sally is called upon by Burger
and others not to cooperate but resists, saying “We’re alive,
that’s worth a hell of a lot”.
However,
forced to deal with a psychopathic guard named Holst (Martin Brambach),
and sympathetic to Russian art student Kolya (Sebastian Urzendowsky)
who has contacted tuberculosis, he is torn between his determination
to stay alive and his knowledge that producing the perfect American
dollar will affect the lives of his fellow workers as well as undermine
the entire Allied cause. Ruzowitsky, to his credit, does not take a
position on the internal debate, but gives the viewer enough leeway
to question what they would have done in similar circumstances. The
Counterfeiters is a fascinating and thought- provoking film, yet
perhaps because it lacks sympathetic characters or a neat resolution,
it fails to provide the dramatic impact expected from such challenging
material. Effective and accomplished are not words that stir the blood,
yet they are the best way to describe this film.
©2008 Howard Schumann
CineScene
