Ghosts Forge

Film night, and I've been tackling The Counterfeiters, the true story of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp counterfeiting scheme, in which the Nazi government attempted to destroy the British economy by using skilled camp inmates to forge millions of banknotes and flooding them into the UK. It's a compelling film which provides us with a different angle on the cruelty of the concentration camp; while the counterfeiters live in relative comfort, fed well and with some safety and security from extermination, the guilt of knowing that others are being massacred within the same camp (including families and friends), and the awareness that their actions are slowing the Allied war effort, allowing more Nazi atrocities, lead them to the moral dilemma of whether it's justifiable to act in preservation of your own life while others suffer as a result. The uneasy but largely cordial relationship between the inmates and their captors makes scenes of cruelty and kindness all the more powerful, shining a spotlight on a difficult but fascinating chapter of history.