Sorowitsch biography

Salomon Smolianoff (March 1899–1976) was a Russian counterfeiter and Holocaust survivor involved in Operation Bernhard. In the film The Counterfeiters based on Adolf Burger's memoirs received a foreign-language Oscar for Austria in 2008, the character is renamed Salomon "Salli" Sorowitsch. The character is played by Karl Markovics, an Austrian stage and television actor.

Life

Salomon Smolianoff was born to a Jewish family in Kremenchuk, Russia. He studied painting in Russia, but he had to leave the country in 1922 because his parents were on the wrong side of the Russian Revolution. He went across Europe, was married in Italy, and finally tried to start a new life in Germany, where he met a counterfeiter and decided to become one himself. He was wanted by several European police forces prior to the outbreak of World War II. In 1939 Bernhard Krüger, future SS Sturmbannführer head of Operation Bernhard, put him behind bars. He was sent to the Mauthausen concentration camp, and made himself useful to the S.S. guards as a portraitist and artist. He was selected for Operation Bernhard, transferred to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1944, and eventually to the Ebensee site of the Mauthausen camp network, where he was liberated by the US Army on 6 May 1945. All traces of the master counterfeiter Smolianoff were lost after his liberation. He was soon on international "Wanted" lists as a counterfeiter, but he is also believed to have forged emigration papers for Jews trying to go to Palestine.

He then emigrated to Uruguay, where he counterfeited Russian icons. The Uruguayan police apparently caught on, and Smolianoff moved to Brazil in the 1950s, where he went into the toy business.

Smolianoff died in Porto Alegre, south of Brazil, in 1976. He allegedly spent his last years painting portraits and creating toys.

Operation Bernhard

Operation Bernhard was directed by, and named after, SS-Sturmbannführer (Major) Bernha

In The Counterfeiters, Karl Markovics plays Salomon Sorowitsch, a skilled forger who, during WWII, is captured and interned in a concentration camp in Berlin. Salomon, along with other Jewish printers and forgers, is forced to produce millions in counterfeit money, in a bid to destablise British and American economies. Here, Markovitz talks about the character of Sorowitsch, his true life counterpart, and what author Adolf Burger thought of the adaptation of his book.

Salomon Sorowitsch is a very complex character. How did you get into his head?

It's very easy for me, but he is not someone that people can understand very easily. I read a lot about that time. Not just because of this character, but I've always been interested in everything around me.

You have to try to forget all your knowledge and rely on imagination. Sorowitsch is not an intellectual, he is not a man with political sense or a sense of society or of the circumstances around him. He doesn't want to be known too much. These are things that serve me more than studies of history.

What do you find appealing about him?

What I like about him is that he is really not a good guy, but he has some principles. He would never say something against his own people. In this case [that means] all the guys in that counterfeiting unit. On the one hand he is the lone wolf, but on the other hand he has a need for family. The people he's connected with, he protects, because they are part of his special world.

Through all the history I created around him, I started to like him. There are many sides to him that we cannot see. I like that.

What has been the response from the author of the book, Adolf Berger?

He once visited on set, but I just said hello because it was really strange to have this 90-year-old man who had survived all this, in this [set] which was supposed to represent his memories, his life, but was just a movie set. But afterwards I met him and we talked a lot. I am very proud that he alwa

2007 Austrian-German film by Stefan Ruzowitzky

The Counterfeiters (German: Die Fälscher) is a 2007 Austrian-German drama film written and directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky. It fictionalizes Operation Bernhard, a secret plan by Nazi Germany during World War II to destabilize the United Kingdom by flooding its economy with forgedBank of Englandpound notes. The film centres on a Jewish counterfeiter, Salomon 'Sally' Sorowitsch, who is coerced into assisting the operation at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

The film is based on the 1983 Czech-language memoirKomando padělatelů ("The Commando of Counterfeiters") by Adolf Burger, which was published in English as The Devil's Workshop. Burger was a Jewish Slovak typographer who was imprisoned in 1942 for forging baptismal certificates to save Jews from deportation and was later interned at Sachsenhausen to work on Operation Bernhard. Ruzowitzky consulted closely with Burger through almost every stage of the writing and production. The film won the 2007 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar at the 80t

Salomon Smolianoff ((Kremenchuk, 26 de março de 1897 – Porto Alegre, 14 de novembro de 1976) was a Jewish counterfeiter and Holocaust survivor involved in Operation Bernhard. In the 2007 film The Counterfeiters based on Adolf Burger's memoirs (which film received a foreign-language Oscar for Austria in 2008), the character is renamed Salomon "Sally" Sorowitsch. The character is played by Karl Markovics, an Austrian stage and television actor.

Life

Salomon Smolianoff was born to a Jewish family in Kremenchuk, Ukraine. He studied painting in the Russian Empire, but he had to leave the country in 1922 because his parents were on the wrong side of the Soviet Revolution. He went across Europe, was married in Italy, and finally tried to start a new life in Germany, where he met a counterfeiter and decided to become one himself. He was wanted by several European police forces prior to the outbreak of World War II. In 1939 Bernhard Krüger, future SS Sturmbannführer head of Operation Bernhard, put him behind bars. He was sent to the Mauthausen concentration camp, and made himself useful to the S.S. guards as a portraitist and artist. He was selected for Operation Bernhard, transferred to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1944, and eventually to the Ebensee site of the Mauthausen camp network, where he was liberated by the US Army on 6 May 1945. All traces of the master counterfeiter Smolianoff were lost after his liberation. He was soon on international "Wanted" lists as a counterfeiter, but he is also believed to have forged emigration papers for Jews trying to go to Palestine.

He then emigrated to Uruguay, where he counterfeited Russian icons. The Uruguayan police apparently caught on, and Smolianoff moved to Brazil in the 1950s, where he went into the toy business.

Smolianoff died in Porto Alegre, in the south of Brazil, in 1976. He allegedly spen