Adapted from an autobiography by Holocaust survivor Adolf Burger, the Austrian Stefan Ruzowitzky’s film The Counterfeiters tells the true story of Operation Bernhard, the largest counterfeiting operation in history. Set up by the Nazis in 1936 in an effort to weaken Allied economies by flooding them with fake banknotes, it was carried out by detainees in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp where a unit of jailed printers, typographers, graphic artists and others were overseen by Nazi camp guards.

The Counterfeiters is a suspense-filled, engaging and entertaining film. It is also very uncomfortable to watch, not just because of the horrors is depicts and insinuates, but also because it pushes us to judge the men in the ‘Golden Cage’.

By following orders to forge the pound and later the dollar, the counterfeiters help the Nazi war effort. But if they refuse to take orders or if they sabotage the operation, they face execution. In the film this quandary is embodied by Sorowitscz – the pragmatic survivalist whose prison uniform is marked both by the yellow star of Jews and the green triangle of ‘habitual criminals’ – and by Burger – the young, leftist idealist who was detained for distributing anti-Nazi leaflets. While Sorowitscz works hard to comply with the Nazis’ demands in order to survive, Burger tries to persuade him and the others to revolt.

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