The Jewish Forger the SS Kept Alive to Print £130 Million in Fake Pounds

In August 1944, the SS pulls a convicted criminal forger out of a concentration camp because they need his hands. Salomon Smolianoff had counterfeited currency across Europe since the 1920s — now the Nazis want him to copy the US dollar inside the sealed Blocks 18 and 19 of Sachsenhausen. But the hundred and forty prisoners forging £130 million in fake British pounds already understand the terrible math: the better they forge, the longer they live — and the day their work is perfect is the day they become expendable. This is how forgery became a fight to stay alive.