Don't miss riveting Counterfeiters' grim period in history

Don't miss riveting Counterfeiters' grim period in history

by Rajkhet Dirzhud-Rashid - SGN A&E Writer The Counterfeiters Opens March 7 Be warned; the images in The Counterfeiters, the new film based on the book, The Devil's Workshop, by Adolf Burger, will linger in your mind after the credits roll - and these are not warm, fuzzy images. But this is not the kind of violence Hollywood is painting our movie screens red with these days. No, this is a film that dives deep into one of the most ingenious and wicked slices from a very dark pie of history. That history being the mass murder of over six million innocent people, guilty only of being what Adolf Hitler and his regime of terrorists called "filth" during the rule of the Third Reich in Nazi Germany. This page of history deals with a group of Jewish printers whose task it was to print counterfeit money that the German army hoped to flood into the European market, thus destroying the economy of Britain and, they hoped, America. Luckily, and thanks to the determined effort of the men forced to work in this effort who delayed the process and, in their own ways, sabotaged this plan, this plot never got off the ground, and Germany did eventually lose the war. Focusing mostly on Salomon Sorowitsch, called "the master counterfeiter" by the Nazi CID agent who arrests, then enlists him in the counterfeiting effort, Sally (as he is nicknamed) not only finally cracks the problems the Nazis are having making a real English pound note, but keeps his fellow inmates from falling apart. He is the lynchpin, the chosen treasure this ambitious Nazi has chosen for his skill at making passable counterfeit currency and passports, and he is the one who stands up for a more idealistic and frustrated comrade, when that man tries to sabotage the effort, which would put every man in jeopardy of death. Played with a sad, but elegant understated grace, Sally (Karl Marcovics), grounds the film and makes one care about the other men, including the tubercular artist Kolya (Sebastian Urzendowsky). Not a happy film, but a beautiful film, The Counterfeiters at times looks like an old postcard from the WWII period, and at other times - with its startling cinematography - brings to light the most brutal acts imaginable in an almost artistic way. This is one not to miss, and one that will stay with you and move you deeply.