The other side of the wall
Arbeit Macht Frei. Ok, I just watched The Counterfeiter and was a bit taken away by the drama. This is not just any drama with a backdrop of a concentration camp. Just in case you missed the my previous post of the same movie.
Click here for the superb movie trailer.
Synopsis
The true story of Salomon Sorowitsch, counterfeiter extraordinaire and bohemian. After getting arrested in a German concentration camp in 1944, he agrees to help the Nazis in an organized counterfeit operation set up to help finance the war effort.
It was the biggest counterfeit money scam of all times. Over 130 million pound sterling were printed, under conditions that couldn’t have been more tragic or spectacular. During the last years of the war, as the German Reich saw that the end was near, the authorities decided to produce their own banknotes in the currencies of their major war enemies. They hoped to use the duds to flood the enemy economy and fill the empty war coffers. At the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, two barracks were separated from the rest of the camp and the outside world, and transformed into a fully equipped counterfeiters workshop. ‘Operation Bernhard’ was born. Prisoners were brought to Sachsenhausen from other camps to implement the plan: professional printers, fastidious bank officials and simple craftsmen all became members of the top-secret counterfeiter commando. They had the choice: if they cooperated with the enemy, they had a chance to survive, as first-class prisoners in a ‘golden cage’ with enough to eat and a bed to sleep in. If they sabotaged the operation, a sure death awaited them. For THE COUNTERFEITERS, it was not only a question of saving their own lives, but also about saving their conscience as well…
The most touching part of this story is when the Nazis fled and the concentration camp was taken over by the other unfortunate Jew inmates. The counterfeiters professional group lived in luxury and were separated from the rest of the camp. Of course they always heard of killings and cries on the other side of the wall but they felt luckier and rather blast the gramophone. When the wall separating them collapsed and the other jews went amok and saw these counterfeiters in good clean clothes, well fed, and playing ping-pong….. they couldn’t believe they are also imprisoned there and wanted to shoot them because they don’t look like the rest of them (skinny, malnourished, dirty). Thats when the counterfeiters showed them the serial numbers tattooed to their hands and the amok fellas started to believe. Then the counterfeiters showed them their barracks, their working place, their purpose and why are they given special treatment by the SS and I was so touched when the malnourished guys sat on the double-decker beds with soft clean and comfortable mattress and pillows and cried.
Man, you gotta watch this. Just don’t expect battlefield shooting spree.
