Consider the means by which history is portrayed in the German film Essay

Consider the means by which history is portrayed in the German film The Counterfeiters(2007). How does the film contribute to - Essay Example The authenticity of the events as they have occurred in real life transports the audience to see what people had been subjected to during those dark times. â€Å"Die Falscher â€Å"or â€Å"The Counterfeiters† takes on a new light in the development of the historical construct that was the Nazi concentration camps by introducing divergent characters who are as real as they could possibly be. The reality of human nature as one faces moral problems is an inherent quality that we cannot escape, particularly if we are faced with choices under abnormal circumstances. â€Å"The Counterfeiters† brings a new perspective on the people that seem inconsequential but make the ultimate difference and how their choices bring about the consequences that may reasonably alter the course of history. Consequently, flooding the market with counterfeited bills of the enemy is a viable plot to sway the war, but this intangible notion of a mere possibility in the eyes of prison workers is s econdary to the threat of imminent death. The film presents us inadvertently with an alternate scenario where the dollar was forged earlier and the Nazis could have stood a better chance of winning the entire war. â€Å"The Counterfeiters† shows us that the infamous concentration camps of World War II, just as fundamentally as history itself, are made up of people, people and their choices. As the introduction of Eleanor Roosevelt to the renowned book â€Å"Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl† so eloquently puts it, â€Å"living in constant fear and isolation, imprisoned not only by the terrible outward circumstances of war but inwardly by themselves, made me intimately and shockingly aware of war's greatest evil--the degradation of the human spirit.† Though Anne Frank and the people in â€Å"The Counterfeiters† may have had different experiences, the fear and mortification runs parallel between them. The men chosen for ‘Operation Bernhand were ha ndpicked because of their previous professions vital to the operations of a large-scale currency counterfeiting scheme confidential even to other high ranking SS officials. Central to the entire process is Salomon ‘Sally’ Sorowitsch, a world class counterfeiter living the high life in Berlin before he was caught by the Sturmbannfuhrer Friedrich Herzog. â€Å"Like most films about the Holocaust it is a survivor’s tale, and its protagonist, at least at first, seems long on guile and short on scruple† (Scott par.1). The triangle in his uniform represents the tag of a habitual criminal separating him from the other prisoners. Displaying his skills in cunning, Sally finds himself comfortable in the Mauthausen concentration camp by capitalizing on his artistic skills and painting for the Nazi officers. His transfer to the Sachsenhausen camp reunited him with Herzog who privies him to his new role in the forging of the British pound and then onwards to the Americ an dollar. The pivotal dynamics of the story revolves around the struggle between the ideals of two men between Sally Sorowitsch and Adolf Burger. The two represent diverging ethos each with its own viable merit. The film is essentially a story of survival under dire circumstances and how a tactical plan by the Nazis could bring the war to an end. This is framed in the characters of the story and how the human ethical dilemma of choosing between one’