The Counterfeiters (Die Fälscher)

The Counterfeiters (Die Fälscher), from Austrian director Stefan Ruzowitzky, tells the true story of concentration camp Jews who escaped the gas chambers by counterfeiting for the Nazis. The film is based on a memoir written by Adolf Burger, a Jewish Slovak typographer who was imprisoned for forging baptismal certificates to save Jews from deportation and later interned at Sachsenhausen.

In 1942 the Nazi’s launched Operation Bernhard, which aimed to flood the economies of their enemies with millions of forged British pound and US dollar notes, whilst bolstering their own flagging war chest. And who better to do it than the Jews, whose payment was their life, as long as they were needed? So, in the world’s largest ever counterfeiting scam, dozens of Jewish printers, typographers and a few ex-cons in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp were set to work on the forgery of some £130 million. At the helm was Salomon “Sally” Sorowitsch (Salomon Smolianoff in real life), played by Karl Markovics, who had lived the highlife as a professional counterfeiter before his six year ordeal in the concentration camps. “Why earn money by making art?” he asks one person. “Making money by making money is so much easier.”

The operation is sustained by a precarious collaboration between the Jews and their captors. The SS officer in charge is the businessman and pragmatist Friedrich Herzog (Devid Striesow), who negotiates comfortable beds and plentiful food for his workers, fully aware that too much heavy-handedness on his part could end in a riot, which would jeopardize the whole operation. But the sheer terror of Sachsenhausen is never far away, as the screams of its less fortunate residents reverberate through the camp.

Sorowitsch is a rather chilly character whose own survival is his primary concern. His professional integrity, artistic talent and desire to save his own skin, and that of his companions, makes him a godsend to the Nazis, as he churns out stack after stack of perfect forgeries. But the chink in Sorowitsch’s armour is the rebellious Adolf Burger (August Diehl) who deliberately disrupts the counterfeiting operation because it funds the Nazi war effort. This tension between the idealist and the survival artist is at the heart of the film. It is because people were not prepared to stand up for any principles that the Nazis could carry out the extermination of millions of Jews, Burger argues. By supporting the forgeries, the group is effectively funding the Nazi’s atrocities, while their own people meeting unspeakable ends just a few meters away. The film gives both sides a fair shot, and wisely refrains from judgement over such a complex moral puzzle.

The Counterfeiters’ success lies principally in the complexity of its anti-hero. At times, Sorowitsch seems almost amoral in his utter self-absorption. Yet he resolutely refuses to betray Burger, even when he puts the lives of the whole unit at risk, and tenderly cares for a fellow prisoner suffering from TB. His shifty figure belies a man who had already experienced intense suffering at the hands of the soviets before he even stepped on German soil. It’s a testament to Markovics’s impressive performance that this very flawed man is so fascinating.

The film captures in detail the way in which humans manipulate and exert power over others. In order to justify their actions, the Nazis had to dehumanise their Jewish prisoners. Even in the relatively comfortable counterfeiters’ ward, the Jews are referred to by number, rather than name; they are regularly insulted, mocked, beaten, peed on. If one prisoner steps even slightly out of line he is shot dead in front of the group. Interestingly, by using skills that have laid dormant for three years, the counterfeiting work gives the Jewish prisoners a sense of self-worth and, as once character puts it, “reminds us that we’re still human”.

A jazzy soundtrack chimes with the glamorous life of the professional crook, but is coldly ironic in the hellish environment of the concentration camp. It serves as a reminder that the camps inhabitants, known to the authorities only by a five digit number, belong to a happier era when, on the surface at any rate, they were regarded as equal to their non-Jewish fellow citizens.

In conclusion, The Counterfeiters is an impressively directed drama with a gripping story and outstanding performances from its leads.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 at 3:05 pm and is filed under Based on a True Story, DVD Rental, Drama, New Releases, Novel Adaptation, World Cinema. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.