From Apply Now,
Your Guide to German Language.
FREE Newsletter. Sign Up Now!

Die Fälscher (The Counterfeiters), written and directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky (Anatomie), is the first Austrian film ever to win an Oscar (Best Foreign Language Film). The Austro-German co-production is based on an actual historic curiosity: the Nazi plot to weaken the American and British economies by producing massive amounts of counterfeit dollars and pounds. But the real story of the film (and the book it is based on) is what happens when you make a deal with the devil. The devil in this case is the SS officer in charge of Operation Bernhard.

Salomon the master forger

Filmed in France, Austria, and Germany, The Counterfeiters opens and ends with a scene not usually seen in films about the Nazi concentration camps: a man in a business suit sitting on a Mediterranean beach. This shabbily dressed man flashing wads of cash in a fancy hotel and casino in Monte Carlo is an effective way to show the stark contrast of the dilemma faced by the Jewish inmates who end up entangled in Operation Bernhard.

The man we see in Monte Carlo in 1945 is the habitual criminal, forger, and former concentration camp inmate Salomon "Sally" Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics). He is the film's central character, even though the script is based on the memoirs of another figure in the film, the Jewish Slovak typographer Adolf Burger (August Diehl). In February 2008 the real-life Burger joined director Ruzowitzky to attend the Oscar award ceremonies in Hollywood. Burger is the only character in the film with his real name, and who is not a composite of actual people mentioned in his own memoirs, published in German as Des Teufels Werkstatt (The Devil's Workshop).

From Monte Carlo we flash back to the Berlin underworld of 1936, where Sally is a rather successful forger of documents and currency. But he inevitably ends up being arrested by the Berlin policeman Friedrich Herzog (Devid Striesow) and is sent to prison. This being Nazi Germany, the Jewish Sorowitsch soon finds himself in a concentration camp (Mauthausen in Austria), where he uses his artistic talents to curry favor with his overseers, painting family portraits for the SS.

Dealing with the devil

The Second World War is dragging on and Operation Bernhard isn't going as well as the Nazis want. Former police detective Herzog is now the SS officer in charge of the counterfeiting project. He remembers the talented forger he once arrested in Berlin. Sorowitsch joins a group of Jewish inmates who are about to get an offer they can't refuse.

The Nazis have thus far failed to get the talent they need to pull off the counterfeiting plot they have planned. Herzog is desperate to get the men he needs, but they are all in Nazi concentration camps (KZs). So desperate are the Nazis that they are willing to set up a "gilded cage" ("Willkommen im goldenen Käfig!") within the Sachsenhausen KZ near Berlin, a special enclosure that will offer the counterfeiting team what amounts to luxury compared to the hellish camp that surrounds it. The Operation Bernhard team members will have soft clean beds, real food, regular toilets, and a weekly shower. Most significantly, they will be isolated from the daily horror of "normal" life in Sachsenhausen -- even if separated only by thin wooden walls through which they can still hear the sounds of terror on the other side.

Should they not do the work the Nazis expect, the prospect of the gas chambers looms, or perhaps even worse, a return to what passes for life outside their gilded cage. The forgers are faced with a moral dilemma that involves not only their own survival, but the outcome of the war.

Doing the Nazis' bidding may help Germany win the war. Not doing it could mean the forgers' own death. And then there is the fact that the team is living like kings compared to the misery of their fellow Jews at Sachsenhausen. It is truly a diabolical bargain, and Ruzowitzky's motion picture makes that painfully clear.

We also see that, despite their special treatment, or even because of it, the Nazis the forgers come into daily contact with still regard them contemptuously as sub-human. In particular, the loutish Hauptscharführer (head squad leader) Holst (Martin Brambach) makes it clear that his special charges are scum. When he sees Sally smile after hearing the radio news that the war is not going well, he orders him to clean the toilet and then literally pisses on the bent-down chief forger. While Herzog is more "civilized," usually treating his team with respect, he has no problem threatening his special team with being shot if they don't stop their sabotage of dollar production.

There is another scene with Herzog that shows in a grotesque way the irony of his normal life with wife and children contrasted with the camp he works in. Because the war is not going well and he needs fake passports for his family and himself, he invites Sorowitsch to his home. There is an awkward meeting of the grungy prisoner and Herzog's squeaky clean wife. The Nazi and his family either can't see or don't want to see the Kafkaesque parallel universes they are living in.

The good, the bad, and the ugly

One reason The Counterfeiters succeeds as a film is Ruzowitzky's refusal to cast either side as only good or bad. We see good and bad qualities in both Nazis and Jews. The Jewish prisoners are conflicted about their situation and even fight among themselves over it. Within the special team, class differences come to the surface. Sorowitsch's character is the most fully developed, and we see both the tough survivor and his occasional acts of kindness and even courage. Actor Karl Markovics does a wonderful job of portraying this complex character.

The pragmatic Sorowitsch and the idealistic Burger are opposites in many ways. Burger makes every effort to sabotage the project, on principle, while Sally is proud of his work, despite realizing the damage it may cause. The two eventually come to blows over this conflict.

As good as it is, at the end of this 98-minute film, an unsatisfied feeling lingers. Like the film's characters after the camp is deserted by the Nazis, we are left in an odd state of limbo. Perhaps that is unavoidable with such a story, but there are information gaps at times. Even though the film isn't a documentary, under the circumstances, this fictional work could have filled in a few more blanks than it does.

More about the film and the DVD on the next page...