Camp Portraits Emerge From a Local Closet to Yad Vashem

(Jewish Exponent) Named "Operation Bernhard" after Bernhard Krueger, the SS officer who ran it, the Nazi plan was to use millions of fake British pounds to undermine England's economy and bankroll Nazi espionage. Toward the end, they were producing fake American dollars as well.

Cytrin was chief of the engraving division. He and the other counterfeiters were sectioned off in Block 19, an isolated barracks where their work could be kept secret, until they were sent to another camp to be killed in 1945. They were liberated first.

Cytrin, who died in 1971, was known in his family for being paranoid, convinced that the U.S. government had an eye on him. As it turns out, it did. Lawrence Malkin, author of Krueger's Men: The Secret Nazi Counterfeit Plot and the Prisoners of Block 19, found CIA records that show Cytrin was a person of interest, because he could counterfeit again, said Friday. (MORE PRINT)