The Counterfeiters
By Caroline Planque
Posted
March 12,
2008
Winner of the 2008 Academy Awards for best foreign film, Stefan
Ruzowitzky’s époque movie recalls the true story of the largest
counterfeiting enterprise to have ever taken place in history
during the Second World War. “Operation Bernhard” was operated
from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, in an effort to flood
Great Britain and later the US with counterfeited notes to
crumble their economy. A small amount of inmates, all of them
experts in counterfeiting or printing, were brought together to
make the German endeavor a success. In their golden shelter in
the middle of the camp but separated from it, they were provided
with food and a decent shelter, while being able to hear the
atrocities committed on the other side of the wall.
Salomon Sorowitch, the
pragmatic (I’d rather be gassed tomorrow than shot for
nothing today. A day is a day) and Adolf Burger,
the idealist, clash on how far they are ready to go to sabotage
the operation and whether they are ready to sacrifice their own
lives and the lives of their coworkers to put a blow to the
German war’s effort. Human nature is shown at his rawest: the
survival instinct transforms individuals into people they did
not know they could be, for better or for worse. But amid the
tragedy, a strange sense of brotherhood also emerges.
The
Counterfeiters is playing at the
Egyptian
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