On the internet there
are numerous photographs which testify to the love Sarah Kaminsky felt for her
father, Adolfo Kaminsky, who died in January 2023 aged 97. Her biography was
published in France in 2018 and several translations have already been made.
Sarah Kaminsky is the youngest of his children, born when Adolfo was in his
fifties. Before then there were other children by other partners and then three
by his last and longest-term parrtner, Leïla Kaminsky. As I read this book I
lost track of how many partners and children there were in total but it’s clear
enough that many were neglected. As a young man of nineteen, Adolfo is a
handsome fellow in the photograph reproduced in the book; he remains handsome
and well-groomed in the internet photographs of old age.
Sarah Kaminsky’s book
is a monument to her father. It’s written as if by Adolfo, in the first person,
and in the Prologue there is a sketch
of what was involved in researching it: note-taking of conversations with her
father; interviews with others. I read the book as if listening to a reliable
narrator but then had doubts because the narrator built out of the research seems
to have such perfect recall; more or less every narrative has a beginning,
middle and end. Memory is just not that good. So it may be that the biography is
more romanesque than it presents itself as being. It’s certainly a fascinating
read and quite, quite different to another book by a forger previously reviewed
on this site, Shaun Greenhalgh’s A
Forger’s Tale (reviewed 19 July 2018). The aims, motives, satisfactions
could not be more different except for the evident pride in technical
accomplishment.
Another relevant book
for comparison would be with Marie Jalowicz Simon Untergetaucht [Underground in
Berlin] based on tape recordings made by her son towards the end of Marie’s
life and narrating the life of a young Jewish woman living underground in
Berlin during the War.
Adolfo Kaminsky was the
child of Russian-Jewish emigrés of the leftist kind who sought refuge from the
Bolsheviks in France, were expelled and made their way to Argentina (where
Kaminsky was born) and then made their way back. His parents reckoned they would be safe in
rural France even after the Germans arrived in 1940; they weren’t. His mother
was probably murdered by the Germans and the rest of the family ended up in
Drancy bound for Auschwitz and only got out thanks to an intervention by the
Argentinian consul - they still had Argentinian nationality.
Kaminsky began in his
teens a thirty year career as a forger of false documents and worked first in
the service of the French resistance, particularly those parts finding safe
houses or escape routes for Jews. Later, he worked briefly for the immediate
post-Liberation French security services and then for a long succession of
liberation movements, notably the Algerian FLN, and for those fleeing
repressive regimes. He retired from his always-unpaid work as forger in 1971
when he felt that he was about to be caught and go to prison. He produced false
documents in prodigious quantities, dozens or more at a time, and not only
French ones - forging Swiss passports was very satisfying because they were
supposed to be the most highly protected against forgery. But he would only
forge for those he believed to be morally and politically worthy of support. He tried to draw a firm line against organisations which used terrorist violence. That complicated his immediate post-war work for Zionist movements working
to drive the British out of Palestine. One remarkable story in the book (pages 125-28) sees him agree to make the timer for a Stern gang (Lehi) bomb which will kill the British Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin. He makes the timer but with one special feature; it won't work.
One must remember that the
post-war France in which Kaminsky did most of his work was not a country of
liberty, equality or fraternity but a repressive state more like those headed
by Franco and Salazar and many of whose citizens were nostalgic for Vichy (and
remain so to this day). A great deal of repressive violence was deployed,
especially in Paris, where Maurice Papon became Chief of Police in 1958. He was
eventually tried and convicted of wartime crimes against humanity - but not
until 1998 when he was at the end of a highly successful police and political
career spanning fifty years during which time he was directly responsible for
the deaths of many innocent people, notably in the massacres of demonstrators
in 1961 and 1962. To this day, it is unclear how many dead there were. See Papon’s
Wkipedia entry.
Writing that about
Paris, I remembered an occasion when I was invited to a private party (a small
one) where the front door was opened not by the host but by his Security. The
host, living in some Parisian banlieue,
was from North Africa who even as late as 1971 might well receive unwelcome
visitors. I forget the details and it’s pointless to speculate who invited me
or why. Paris in 1971 is also the only place where I have ever been stopped and
asked to show my papers to a police officer. I was walking back to my room from
the cinema, late one evening. I was carrying my Carte de Séjour (it was obligatory to do so) and as he handed it back
to me the officer saluted. I guess it helped to be English not North African.