Adolfo Kaminsky
Adolfo Kaminsky or Adolphe Kaminsky (born in Argentina on October 1, 1925) was a French Resistant, specialized in the forgery of identity documents who later went on to assist Jewish emigration to Israel and then for the National Liberation Front and French draft dodgers during the Algerian War (1954-62). He forged papers for thirty years for different activist groups, mainly national liberation fronts, without ever claiming money for it [1].
Before the war
Born in Argentina in a Jewish family from Russia, his family moved to Paris in 1932, where his father worked as a tailor, then to Vire, in the Calvados department, in 1938, where his uncle was established [2]. Adolfo worked in a dye shop, being fascinated by chemistry of colourants. He bought at that time a treaty from Marcellin Berthelot on the flea market[2]. He later created his own lab at his uncle's house, and worked in a butter-shop as assistant of a chemist who taught him the basics [2].
World War II
After the German invasion of France, in 1940, his mother was killed by the Nazis in 1941. Aged 17, Adolfo Kaminsky entered the Resistance. At first, he watched the train-station of Vire from where wagons of the Todt Organization, loaded of material for the Atlantic Wall, transited. He sent messages to London about these trains. However, his family was interned in the camp of Drancy, last stop before deportation, in 1943. Thanks to support from the Consul of Argentina, which country had broken diplomatic relations with Nazi Germany under pressure from the United States, they managed to be freed on 22 December 1943 [3].
Adolfo then worked in an underground laboratory in Paris ( 17, rue des St Pères) where he passed the rest of the war forging identity papers for Jews and people searched by the Nazis. He met the network by going to search false ID for his father: the Resistant group, made up of Jewish people from the General Jewish Union (among whom Marc Hamon, alias "the Pingouin", Suzie, Loutre, René, etc.) and called La Sixième[3], was having problems deleting Waterman blue ink stains on papers. Adolfo told them to use lactic acid, and thereafter joined the group, finally becoming responsible of the chemical forgery lab. They notably have to respond to the challenge of the invention of the watermark. Kaminsky also quickly learnt photogravure under a false pretext, and set up a new lab in order to created "real-false" documents. The Kaminsky Lab became the main producer of false ID for North of France and Benelux, although ties with other clandestine groups were discontinued, each group working as a cell.
He used to say: "Keep awake. The longer possible. Struggle against sleep. The calculation is easy. In one hour, I make 30 false papers. If I sleep one hour, 30 people will die.[4]."
After the Liberation of Paris (August 1944), he joined the French Army and marched to Germany. He was awarded the Médaille de la Résistance, and engaged by the French military secret services, whom charged him of making false ID for spies sent behind the lines in order to investigate and detect the location of concentration camps before their dismantlement by the Nazis.
After the war
After the German capitulation, he helped Jews to emigrate to Palestine from 1946 to 1948, at a time when the United Kingdom was imposing quotas limiting immigration (see also Aliyah Bet). After the foundation of Israel, he stopped this job, refusing a "religious state" endorsed by the Secular-religious Status quo giving an important role to the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, and became photographer.
He resigned from the military services at the beginning of the Indochina War, unwilling to collaborate in a colonial war. He thereafter continued to forge papers for various groups, working first with the National Liberation Front of Algeria and French draft dodgers by setting up a clandestine lab in Paris. He collaborated with the Jeanson network and Henri Curiel during the war.
Starting in 1963, he assisted various leftist movements from South America (Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Salvador, Nicaragua, Colombia, Peru, Uruguay, Chile, Mexico, Saint-Domingue, Haïti), Africa (Guinea-Bissau, Angola, South Africa) and from Portugal (then under Salazar's dictatorship) and Francoist Spain [5]. He trained a lot of people in forgery in order to support them in their struggle against dictatorships. He always worked for free, in order to be able to refuse a job if he didn't support the ideas - the only exception being during World War II, when the lab took up all his expenses in order to make him able to dedicate him full-time to this job.
He also supported the Greeks struggling against the regime of the Colonels, and made false ID papers for American draft dodgers during the Vietnam War. In 1968, he also made false ID for Daniel Cohn Bendit to allow him to speak at a meeting - he would later on say : "It was certainly the least useful, but a way of showing that there is nothing more porous than a border and that ideas don't know them"[3].
He made his last false ID in 1971, putting an end to his career. He lived 10 years in Algiers, married with an Algerian woman, from whom he had five children. In 1982, he moved to France with a temporary residence permit [3]. All his family was naturalized French in 1992 [3].
Adolfo Kaminsky has been awarded with the Croix du Combattant, the Croix de Combattant Volontaire de la Résistance and recently by the médaille de Vermeil de la ville de Paris for his acts during the Resistance.
Jacques Falck has made a documentary film on his life, named Foreign Identity. Kaminsky's son is a quite-known hip-hop singer, Rocé [3]. Among other themes close to conscious hip hop, his lyrics highlight his various origins (Jewish, Argentinian, Russian, French, Algerian, muslim, etc.) and support peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, recall history of the US civil rights movement and of Black Power, sometimes not well known by French youth, and defends feminism.
His daughter, Sarah, born in 1979, is a comedian and writer, who wrote her father's biography, Adolfo Kaminsky, une vie de faussaire (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 2009).
References
- ^ Adolfo Kaminsky, une vie de faussaire.
- ^ a b c « Mon activité de faussaire : j'ai tout appris à Vire », Ouest France, October 28, 2009
- ^ a b c d e f Adolfo Kaminsky, le faussaire au grand coeur, Ouest France, October 28, 2009
- ^ Adolfo Kaminsky, une vie de faussaire, Libération, February 5, 2010
- ^ Adolfo Kaminsky, une vie de faussaire II