Adolfo Kaminsky – The Forger
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Adolfo Kaminsky – Resume
Adolfo Kaminsky was born in Argentina in October 1, 1925.
he was a French-Jewish activist of the former French underground, who specialized in forging IDs, among other things for Jews who tried to escape the Nazis. During his life, Kaminsky helped thousands of people to cross borders.
Adolfo Kaminsky came from a poor family in France. Before the war, Adolfo was a young boy with nothing more than an elementary school diploma. He had to work to earn a living, so he went to work for clothes dyer, and that’s where he discovered the magic of color, which made him what he is today, a Hero.
“Of course, everything I did was illegal. But when something legal is completely against humanity, you have to fight.”
As you can tell from this sentence, Kaminsky was a justice man.
Adolfo Kaminsky – Life Course
What were you doing at the age of 18?
It is a big moment, to become an 18-year-old. People start to throw around the word “adult”, and you start to plan your life from now on, as an “adult”. And we all know that things are about to change, really change. So maybe you were trying to join the Military, maybe you went to a bar with your friends to Have an alcoholic drink for the first time, maybe you even wanted to rent an apartment with your girlfriend. As impressive as it was, it probably doesn’t even come close to what Adolfo Kaminsky was putting his effort toward. While just a teen during World War II, Kaminsky saved thousands of lives from the Nazis by forging passports for them and smuggled them out of the country.
In 1940, after the German invasion of France, the family house in Vire was taken by the Germans and Kaminsky temporarily lived in another house. His mother was killed by the Nazis in 1941. Aged 17, Adolfo Kaminsky entered the Resistance. In 1943 his family was interned in the camp of Drancy, as a prelude to deportation. Thanks to the support from the Consul of Argentina, they were freed in 1943 and moved to Paris. Adolfo then worked in an underground laboratory in Paris where he passed the rest of the war forging identity papers for Jews and people sought by the Nazis. He was introduced to the network, the Resistance group while researching a false ID for his father. This group, made up of Jewish people from the General Jewish Union was having problems removing blue ink stains from papers. Adolfo suggested they use lactic acid, and thereafter joined the group, finally becoming responsible for the chemical forgery lab. They notably had to respond to the challenge of the invention of the watermark. Kaminsky also quickly learned photogravure under a false pretext and set up a new lab in order to create “real-false” documents. The Kaminsky Lab became the main producer of false IDs for northern France. The group works as a cell.
“In one hour, I make 30 false papers. If I sleep one hour, 30 people will die.”
As you can tell from this sentence, Kaminsky cares a lot for the people and his work.
In 1944, Adolfo Kaminsky was an 18 years old boy in Paris. He was also the lab director for a group of people making up a secret Jewish resistance cell. Their Parisian lab fabricated passports for children and families who were about to be deported to concentration camps. They told their neighbors they were painters so they wouldn’t question the chemical smells. Kaminsky saved thousands of lives by his 19th birthday by creating fake passports by hand to get people into hiding or help them cross borders to escape the Nazis. After the Liberation of Paris in 1944, he joined the French Army and walked to Germany. He was awarded the Médaille de la Résistance (Resistance Medal) and joined the French military secret services, who entrusted him with making false IDs for spies sent behind the lines in order to investigate and detect the location of concentration camps before their dismantlement by the Nazis. Throughout the war, Kaminsky created documents that saved the lives of 14,000 Jews.
Nowadays, Adolfo Kaminsky currently living in France with his daughter Sarah Kaminsky, Adolfo is 94 years old.
Bibliography
Article – Adolfo Kaminsky Save Thousands From Nazi Deportation As A Teenager – https://curiosity.com/topics/adolfo-kaminsky-save-thousands-from-nazi-deportation-as-a-teenager-curiosity/
New York Times documentary film “The Forger” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dup6KOoaAUc
Wikipedia page on Adolfo Kaminsky – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolfo_Kaminsky
Published: Jan 29, 2020
Latest Revision: Jan 29, 2020
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