Adapt or Die: The Counterfeiters

Adapt or Die: The Counterfeiters

What impressed me the most when I saw the German film, “The Counterfeiters,” was someone had found a new angle on the concentration camp theme, which I didn’t think was possible after all these years. It is a fascinating tale, based on a little known fact of German history during the Second World War, untold for many years. I can now understand why it won an Oscar the Best Foreign Film for 2007.

It is the story of Jewish master forger, Solomon Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics) better know as “Sally” in the film and to his contingent of skilled typographers, artists, paper-makers, and printers that worked with him to counterfeit some 130 million pounds sterling, passports for various countries, stamps, and Id cards for spies. They constituted a thriving industry within the framework of the Holocaust and a method of survival for approximately 140 men through the length of the Second World War. The film opens with Sally in a casino gambling and spending the night with a woman. He was a bon vivant living a criminal life as a successful counterfeiter, considered the best of his generation. But eventually he was caught by a cop named Herzog (Devid Striesow) who had been on his tail for a long time; he was sent to a death camp rather than prison because he was Jewish. His philosophy in the camp was simple, adapt or die, and he lived by that code while he continued gambling with other inmates. But then after more then a year he was transferred to another concentration camp, Sachsenhausen, Cellblock 18 and 19, which was one unit and isolated from the rest of the camp. That was the printing shop (18) and living quarters (19) it had already been running three years before Sally arrived on the scene. The commandant of the camp was none other than Herzog, his old nemesis on the outside. The two old adversaries struck a bargain, which Sally was happy to do because the inmates were treated well, with opera music while they work, clean warm beds, decent food, and recreation, like chess, card games and even ping-pong. In the previous camp Sally was quartered in some horse stables with no concern for hygiene, much less comfort or warm beds. Sachsenhausen was like going to heaven. Herzog was a reasonable man, and even admired Sally’s artistry as a forger, but he had to produce or else both could be shot. There was another lower ranked German officer who was the prototypical Nazi brute: An oaf who would off any “Jew scum” just for the hell of it. So it might have been soft duty but still, death was possible if you weren’t very careful.

But there was another form of trouble in the camp. One of the inmates, a typographer named Adolph Burger (August Diehl) defied Sally’s gospel of survival and started to sabotage the operation, arguing they were helping the German war effort, which was just plain wrong. He was willing to sacrifice all the men in Cellblock 18 for his righteous belief. This tension between the numerous survival-at-all-cost inmates and this lone maniacal idealist goes through the final hour of the film. You can imagine Burger’s attitude did not go over well with his fellow inmates. The idea behind the scheme was to adversely affect the British economy, and to do it eventually to dollars as well, as if $130 million would do anything to upset the U.S, economy. The idea strikes one as preposterous but the Sachsenhausen printing shop did exist and some of the notes were recovered in the 1950s. Not even British Banking experts were able to see the notes were counterfeit. That’s quite a tribute to the skill and artistry of Sally and his crew. It was the paper that made the difference. This was where Sally’s genius came in.

Adolph Burger managed to get a camera just after the last German soldier was gone from the death camp and took pictures of the evidence. He is the spokesman in two sections of the Special features. He is 90 years old but mentally very alert and conversant with the history and all the details of the camp. He has boards full of his pictures and examples, which were quite interesting to see and hear about, as a most curious historical footnote, a story being told for the first time. It is worth checking out after seeing the movie. The film is now available on DVD.

To show you how corrupt the Nazis could be they paid their best spies with the counterfeit money. How’s that for loyalty recognized and courage rewarded?