A common space for harmonic peacemakers

Wrong - and yet properly, Adolfo Kaminsky's work for the resistance

Biography

Daughter Sarah Kaminsky has written a book about the life of her father's counterfeit:

"Adolfo Kaminsky. A forger life. "

Wrong - and yet properly

Adolfo Kaminsky's work for the resistance

Adolfo Kaminsky has almost all the resistance movements of the 20th Century with false papers and identities supplied. He has never taken money for it. He did it out of conviction. His daughter Sarah Kaminsky has now a book about the life of her father wrote: "Adolfo Kaminsky. A forger life".

In a basement laboratory in Paris, the memories romp to a forger life: 30 years, has Adolfo Kaminsky false passports, identity cards and documents circulated. "Impossible to say how many were there: hundreds, thousands, in any case," says Adolfo Kaminsky. "It is a life outside the law, for one simple reason: to save human life. From necessity." A need that arises for the first time 1940: The Kaminsky are Jews. Adolfo is 15 years old when his mother is murdered by the Nazis. He, his sister, his brother and his father survive the French camp at Drancy only by luck.

Life in hiding

Kaminsky has preserved everything.

The boy joins the Resistance in Paris, is the age of 17 forgers - and remains so even after the war for half his life. It was not until late in his daughter learns of her father's past: "As if the secret hiding forever," says Sarah Kaminsky. "The murder of his mother, the camp, the friends he has always sought and never found. That has made him so sad for so long. He has never been overcome."

Kaminsky is now 86 years old. Everything he has preserved. In his account of the Nazi era was simple: One hour is equal to 30 false papers like 30 lives. Day and night, he tinkers on the perfection of forgery, for example on a Nazi stamp. "On this page I have engraved the image of the Nazi stamp shows Kaminsky. "This was new and guaranteed accuracy. When the original is hand emerges and engraved, require absolute exercise. An error in the original must be reproduced. With photo engraving that goes away. Even a Jewish child had to have a passport. Was the name Abraham or Israel, I deleted the name and overwrite. And then was even the red Jewish stamp crosswise on the papers -. even in an infant of two years. "

"Never again Auschwitz"

The dreaded stamp "was the easiest to remove".

The red stamp seals fate of Jews. Kaminsky experimented with a mixture of acetone, and - lo and behold: "I have the mixture with a small knife on the paper knocking, then the stamp is simply dissolved. "remembers Kaminsky. "This stamp, which has made all the biggest fear was to remove the most easily." " Never again Auschwitz "is Kaminsky's credo: "Never dictatorship, no more racism." And so he turns off his 1961 art forger in the service of the Algerian liberation struggle against the colonial power France.

"I've learned: freedom, equality, fraternity," said Adolfo Kaminsky. "That's what I've kept myself. When France has not respected its own principles, I did what I thought was right." Kaminsky is as always: He falsified documents, takes no money, always has only one contact person. "No one was in my laboratory, only one person," said the forger, "and never regularly. The fact that I have taken no money has allowed me to set my own rules." Kaminsky earned his living as a photographer - the best camouflage for his counterfeiting lab.

"There is no good or evil dictatorship"

30 years Kaminsky has brought false documents in circulation.

At the end there are 15 freedom movements around the world, which he supplied with false papers. Whether the Spanish resistance to Franco's dictatorship, the liberation struggle of blacks in South Africa or the revolutionaries in Latin America - they are all for Kaminsky, the pacifist, in the same: "arrests, killings, torture - people are the helpless in all dictatorships exposed, "he says. "Resistance is a battle against tyranny. There is no good or evil dictatorship." In the early 1970s, at the age of 50 years, listened to Kaminsky. He threatens to be revealed. Gone is the long life of counterfeiters. He starts a family. But the past never leaves him.

A Algeria fighter has he returned years later, all forgeries - out of gratitude. "I made a Swiss identity card," says Kaminsky, "and a Swiss driver's license with her photo. This is a special paper. An international driving permit for Switzerland. It was never just a card, produce had to me. That was always the complete series of papers that have been used in a country. " The false papers and the lab are witnesses of a monstrous century. It was the feeling of guilt, to escape the madness of the Holocaust to be, it has the duty to act, Kaminsky said today. "I would not have survived this debt if I had not had so many people can save lives," says the counterfeiters. Adolfo Kaminsky, this "guilt" by his own rules mastered - a lawless life and a dream: that the world as a forger does not need it.

19.08.2011 / Andrea Maurer - Translation: Eva

Buchtipp •Sarah Kaminsky Übersetzung: Barbara Heber-Schärer
"Adolfo Kaminsky: Ein Fälscherleben"
Kunstmann 2011
ISBN-13: 978-3888977312

Book Review • Sarah Kaminsky
Translation: Barbara Heber-Schärer
"Adolfo Kaminsky: A forger of life"
Kunstmann 2011
ISBN-13: 978-3888977312