Overview

This is an enthralling personal account of the secret Nazi project, Operation Bernhard, devised to destabilize the British and, later, American economies by creating and putting into circulation millions of counterfeit banknotes. A team of typographers and printers was pulled out of the rows of prisoners on their way to the gas chambers and transferred to the strictly isolated Block 19 in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. There they were presented with the enormous task of producing almost perfect counterfeits to the value of hundreds of millions of pounds sterling. These notes were to be dropped from bombers over London, with the aim of causing financial chaos. When the time came the Luftwaffe's resources were fully committed in other campaigns and theaters but some of the currency was successfully used to fund operations in Germany's secret war.

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.,. History is not just world changing events. History is not just stories of valor or sadness. History is what makes up a person ... To Moritz Nachtstern, the reluctant counterfeiter, WW2 was his fight for survival, and Counterfeiter told his story in a simple manner that nevertheless triggered deepest emotions. -C. Peter Chen, www.ww2db.com (November 2008) <br> Counterfeiter: How a Norwegian Jew Survived the Holocaust is an addition for both general-interest lending libraries strong in Holocaust studies and for World War II or Judaic history holdings. It tells of the Nazi secret project, Operation Bernhard, which used prisoners to produce counterfeit British bank nots--considered some of the most perfect counterfeits ever produced--which were to be dropped over London to destabilize the British economy. Author Moritz Nachstern was one of those picked for the program: his story survival and the project offers unusual gripping insights. -The Bookwatch (October 2008) <br> As far as Malkin is concerned, it's the 'most reliable and psychologically acute' of the half-dozen memoirs written by participants of the counterfeiting operation. 'To me, it's barely a Holocaust story, 'said Malkin of the counterfeiting saga. It's a story of survival and deception in wartime. -Jon Kalish, The Forward (August 2008) <br> Arresting from start to finish, this harrowing memoir is full of compassion, pain and strength that illuminates from the inside a little-known episode in the Nazi effort. --Publisher's Weekly, Starred Review <p>From the introductory essay by award-winning journalist Lawrence Malkin, author of Krueger's Men: the Secret Nazi Counterfeit Plot and the Prisoners of Block 19 (Little, Brown 2006)<br> Of the half-dozen memoirs written by the prisoners who were conscripted into the greatest counterfeiting operation in history, Moritz Nachtstern's is the most reliable and psychologically acute version of the drama as seen from inside Sachsenhausen's Block 19. Shortly after he returned home in 1945, when his extraordinary experiences were still fresh in his memory, he dictated his reminiscences to his new wife, Rachel. Her typed notes (still in possession of their daughter, Sidsel) were later turned over to a Norwegian journalist, Ragnar Arntzen. He wove them into a story of deceit and survival by the counterfeiting crew of about 145 prisoners and their master, SS Major Bernhard Krueger.

<p>Starred Review. One of just a few accounts from prisoners who worked for the Nazi's Operation Bernhard, this grim account of imprisonment and survival by the late Nachstern (1902-1969), in English for the first time, takes readers inside Hitler's plan to bring down the British and American economies. In 1942, Nachtstern was arrested by the Nazis and, along with more than 500 others, deported to Germany and imprisoned at Auschwitz. A stroke of luck rescues him from the gas chambers, sending him to work as a typographer at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, producing fake British money that the Nazis hoped to use to destroy the UK economy. Nachstern's prose is measured but vivid, his loneliness a steady beat against which his struggle unfolds. Two essays put the man and his memoir in perspective, and an emotional foreword by Nachstern's daughter recalls a man so haunted, he would wake sobbing and screaming. Arresting from start to finish, this harrowing memoir is full of compassion, pain and strength that illuminates from the inside a little-known episode in the Nazi effort. B&w photos.<br>Copyright (c) Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.<p>--Publisher's Weekly

Author Information

Moritz Nachtstern (1902-1969), was a Norwegian-Jewish typographer deported from Oslo in 1942. This is his story, as told to his wife and written down by her, then edited by journalist Ragnar Arntzen. It was originally published in Norwegian in 1949. It covers the three terrible years from his arrest and transportation to Germany, through the horrors of life in Auschwitz and Sachsenhausen to his escape in the last chaotic and terrifying days as the liberating American forces approached. At the center of this personal tale of courage and endurance is Nachtstern's absorbing description of how, in order to survive, he participated in the creation of exquisite forgeries, while working as slowly as possible, both to frustrate the Nazi plan and to ensure that he and his fellow forgers never became expendable.

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