Based in historical fact, horrific, and unique; such is the case with the   best stories and films about the holocaust – a protracted occurrence that to this day, amazingly, some say did not happen. 

Winner of the Oscar for best foreign film, The Counterfeiters tells an engaging story of survival and what can make the difference in a war’s ability to sustain itself. Just as in a Presidential campaign in the US, one needs not only an ample army of people, but plenty of money. 

Salomon “Sally” Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics) is acknowledged as “the king of the counterfeiters,” a criminal so good at his job of forging passports and other documents, he believes that he’s immune to the Nazi purge of the Jews. To him, the sand in the hour glass will never run out. 

Sally later learns that Heroz (Devid Striesow) though presumably his partner, owes his primary allegiance to the Third Reich. Turning Sally in earns Heroz a promotion to a position of influence in the Nazi concentration camp at Sachsenhausen where Sally is sent. Sally’s   assignment, along with other Jews, is to counterfeit the English pound. The goal is to devalue the currency by flooding the country to the point of bankrupting England. 

While Sally’s motto is “adapt or die,” his compatriot Adolf Burger (August Diehl) believes that sabotage is the answer, even if it means death. 

The counterfeiters drag out the project to both delay the benefits to the Nazis as well as to extend their usefulness. They know that at some point, they will be killed when they are no longer needed. 

Based upon the success of making English pound notes, as well as the war not going well for the Germans, the prisoners are given the mission to copy the American dollar. This is not to ruin the American economy but to give the Nazis much needed immediate purchasing power to finance their efforts. 

Conflicts intensify between the Nazis and Jews as well as within the Jews held in the camp. The counterfeiters live in relative luxury for a concentration camp, while other Jews are treated as less than human. One is reminded of the sport of shooting Jews from a hotel room window in “Schindler’s List.” Of note here is that much of the violence is heard or imagined, the point, however, is no less horrific.