The Counterfeiters

The Counterfeiters is another of those difficult films to watch – the kind that you find so personally challenging, you honestly wonder if you could ever watch it again.

The film is the true story of ‘the largest counterfeiting operation in history’ carried out by the Nazis during World War II to destabilize the British and American economies. Operation Berhard involved using the occupants of concentration camps who were skilled in printing, graphic design and forgery to replicate hundreds of millions in pounds and dollars. By the time the war was complete this imprisoned unit had produced three times the reserves held by the Bank of England and cracked the ‘impossible’ US dollar. Only the abrupt ending of the conflict in 1945 prevented the German war machine from putting this endless cash flow to substantial use. It is a tribute to the compelling nature of the story, and the directing talents of Stefan Ruzowitzky, that this foreign language film presents no barrier to an English-speaking audience.

Of course, behind the wide-screen story is the small-scale picture of men battling for survival. The major character is Salomon “Sally” Sorowitsch, the Reichstag’s Rembrandt of counterfeiting. His arrest and transportation to a concentration camp as a habitual offender and a Jew sees him begin the film’s long consideration of what a person will do for survival. Initially interred in the Mauthausen camp he toadies to Nazi officers for extra rations by painting heroic pictures of them and their families. However his skills get him noticed by the SS unit in charge of operation Berhard and he is soon transferred to the infamous camp of Sachsenhausen.

Here, Sally is reintroduced to the German police officer who arrested him, now Sturmbannführer Friedrich Herzog and the commandant of the camp. Herzog is the manipulative mind behind the counterfeiting operation, using a combination of pleasures and threats of pain to compel the Jewish members of his team to produce the all-important currency plates.

Those put to work in the privileged barracks in the centre of Sachsenhausen’s horror are naturally shell-shocked by their dramatic change in fortune. “I wept too the first time I saw a printing press again. It reminds you you were once a human being,” one member of the squad tells an emotional conscript. The smallest luxuries like a clean bed leave the newcomers phased; a trip to the showers can’t be conceived as anything other than an attempt to execute them en masse. There is terror in the showers because the comforts cannot remove where they are.

It is here that The Counterfeiters deals most seriously with the selfishness at the heart of the human soul. “Anything, as long as we are not put out here again. Anything,” says one team member as they briefly emerge from their privileged barracks and observe the deathly squalor and conscienceless cruelty of the rest of the camp. But the question hangs throughout the film, is survival really worth anything?

This is certainly Sally’s initial position. Salomon may be a Jew but he is no nationalist, only a pragmatist. A printer, Adolf Burger (who incidentally co-wrote the script with director Ruzowitzky), tries to enlist him in a plan to attack the guards, and eventually sabotaging the German’s efforts to make money. Sally is sitting outside in their barbed-wire compound when Burger looms over him. He looks up and replies, “You’re standing in the sun.” It’s a reflection as much on Burger’s philosophical position as his physical one. Rebuked for the determined manner in which he co-operates, Sally replies, “I’d rather be gassed tomorrow than shot today. A day is a day.”

As far as holocaust films go The Counterfeiters enters brave territory. Normally the horror of the Nazi camps polarizes such films into black and white characters. But The Counterfeiters appears to question the motivation of those who did whatever was necessary to live. Even though one prisoner says to a man bereft of his children, “Only by surviving can we defeat them,” it becomes clear by the end of the film that living simply isn’t enough.

“Each man must look out for himself,” Herzog tells Sally. “Ultimately your survival is what it’s all about.” It’s a creed the counterfeiter has lived his life by to this point and the sad realization comes that the SS officer is actually the ultimate realisation of that philosophy. The only difference it seems is that one of them ended up on the right side of the wire for that philosophy to pay dividends. It also becomes clear that selfishness can’t be justified either side of the wire. Furthermore, the sudden death of a friend at the hands of a brutal guard despite all Sally’s efforts to sustain him teaches the career criminal that careful plans to survive can come to nothing in a moment. A man has to live fully and faithfully in the now. What he trades his soul to gain may be worth nothing to him in the end.

It is enough to say, without giving away too much plot, that the war finally ends and Salomon must come to terms with the life he has garnered. Earlier words by Burger reflect heavily on this point of the plot. “It’s the principle,” Adolf says when asked why he should want to struggle in a way that may get him and other’s killed. “No-one dies for a principle,” Solly says, but the truth is few people are brave enough to do so. One, however, had the courage to take his principle of self-sacrifice for the sake of others all the way to Hell on a cross. We can only pray that if our commitment to His example is ever tested in a crucible like Sachsenhausen we will remember that there is an accounting beyond death.

In a tale of countless cruelties and personal betrayals it becomes clear that the only currency that cannot be forged is a pure soul. And it is the only payment God will accept. So what can’t be made personally must be gained elsewhere. Thankfully Christ has handed us the keys to the vault.