"Your great-uncle was a hero."

That's what I grew up hearing. Almost every little kid wants to be associated with bravery and valor, and I–fully prepared to brag about this important piece of information–was no exception. I was taught to tell the truth, though. So I told people that I was the 'great-niece of a counterfeiter.'

My family values interesting stories, and from a young age, I've heard about my great-uncle's role in what remains the biggest counterfeiting operation in history. Adolf Burger–better known to me by his Hebrew name, Avri–forged baptism certificates for Jews until he was caught by the Gestapo and sent to Auschwitz. After surviving a mass execution and various medical experiments, the Nazis recruited him for an operation to forge British and American money and topple both countries' economies.

That's where his movie role begins.

The Counterfeiters, the Austrian movie that snagged an Oscar this year for Best Foreign Film, was based on a memoir Avri Burger wrote. Needless to say, I was excited to see it–I was also beyond scared. I'm no stranger to the Holocaust, but the idea of the usual distant horrors suddenly becoming personal made me slightly queasy.

To my great amusement, the director made my great-uncle the film's moral pillar. He appears later in the film as the antithesis to the main characters: a cynical, fairly unethical criminal named Salomon Sorowitsch. One of the first things he says to Salomon is, "The real criminals are the capitalists" (alternatively: "I am the token Communist, hear me roar!") He laments being kept in relative luxury, and later leads an effort to sabotage the counterfeiting operation. His rebellion brings up the movie's main moral dilemma: is it right to cooperate and save the group, or to rebel and potentially put fellow prisoners at risk? Most people think he's nuts. At one point, he gets beaten up by fellow prisoners who fear he'll be the end of them. But Burger shows foresight when he figures out that the Nazis are running out of steam. Idealistically hoping to kill the operation before the war's end, Burger refuses to counterfeit properly–even when confronted with a forge-or-die ultimatum.

The director's portrayal is not entirely correct, though. Avri did play a significant part in the sabotage, but it was small, and he certainly did not talk about prisoner uprisings. For him, the biggest reason for slowing the Nazi operation was staying alive–he knew that the moment he had no special use, he would be killed. (One thing I won't deny–the whole randomly-insulting-capitalists thing was quite accurate.)

I winced whenever Avri was shown being beaten; each punch felt like a blow to my entire family. But the movie's most painful moments come from past events: lost relatives, lost dignity, and–for the young ones–lost opportunity. The morally compromising situation the prisoners are put in forces them to question what it means to be a decent human being.

To be completely honest, I've never actually met Avri. I've had lengthy conversations with all of his siblings, but I've never been able to tell him how much his history means to me. Most of his character's actions in the movie reminded me eerily of things my mother always taught me: remember the plights of others, stand tall in the face of authority and never give up on life. This summer, my family is planning to go to Prague to visit him, and I already know what my first words to his translator will be.

"So you played ping pong with SS officers?" I'll get to the deep stuff later.