The Counterfeiters [Die Fälscher] (***)

Directed By: Stefan Ruzowitzky
Starring: Karl Markowics
Seen: November 16th 2008

*** Out of ****

The Counterfeiters is the true story of the biggest counterfeiting operation in history, set up by the Nazi’s in 1936. The film won the 2008 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and I tend to agree that it deserved the honours bestowed upon it. And yes, it was only released in South Africa in November of 2008 – more than a full year after its European release, shameful.

Sally Sorowitch (Markowics) is a very successful German Jew. He is a master counterfeiter. He does passports, mostly, but has also attempted to create the US Dollar. A few years before WWII encroaches on his territory, he gets captured by the Nazi’s, and is thrown in jail. During WWII however, he is not thrown into the general Jewish population concentration camp at Sachsenhausen, but kept apart with some other Jews, who, like him, are all selected for their unique skills in different levels of forgery.

They join Project Bernhard, where they are imprisoned within a secluded area of Sachsenhausen, kept apart from the other Jews. They only occasionally hear the marching of Jews as they are being tortured. The viewer also never sees the true horrors of the Holocaust in the film, much like the team on Project Bernhard were kept away from it. We only see the Nazi brutality in limited doses, as the Nazi’s wanted these guys to work for them, and only mistreated them in more severe cases of “misguided punishment”. From the get go, Adolf Burger, one of the Jews on Project Bernhard, remains openly opposed to the Nazi’s. He refuses to wear clothing given to them when he figures out it comes from murdered Jews before they are even told what they are to do.

It is amazing to see what these guys did, from forging millions of British Pounds to trying to forge the US Dollar, and it is amazing that the Nazi’s could keep this going for so long. These guys helped the Nazi’s finance a big part of their WWII effort from the British Pounds forged, but also helped bring the Nazi giant to its knees when the Dollar could not be perfected soon enough. It still remains haunting though, WWII was not the Germans’ proudest moment, and even though we don’t see much of the horror, we still know it’s right there in this very effective and truly involving film.