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1:15

Adolfo

1:19

Kaminski was 18 years old when

1:21

his family was arrested and taken to

1:23

a Nazi internment camp in France called

1:26

Dronsi. On the walls, you

1:29

had like, gravities of people

1:31

who were trying to let

1:34

a message for their family before

1:36

leaving the camp, you know. They

1:39

were just saying like, hi,

1:41

it's Hannah, a message for

1:43

my mother. I was

1:45

there. You know, things

1:48

like that. Adolfo

1:50

was told that his job at

1:52

the camp would be to paint over the

1:54

messages. So what he

1:56

used to do is, after the painting,

1:59

he used to rewrite them. but very

2:01

small with not a needle,

2:03

but something a little bit bigger than a

2:05

needle, you know. So

2:07

the Nazis would not see that it

2:09

was something colored on the wall, but

2:12

he used to reproduce all the messages.

2:15

This is Adolfo's daughter, Sarah

2:17

Kaminsky. She

2:19

saw her father and his family were released

2:21

from the camp after three months. They

2:24

made their way to Paris, which was occupied

2:26

by the Nazis. And

2:28

Adolfo and his family realized they wouldn't be

2:31

safe there. They needed

2:33

new identities. Adolfo's

2:36

father knew of someone who was

2:38

secretly working with the resistance against

2:40

the Nazis. They

2:43

asked for pictures of the family to

2:45

make fake papers. They

2:47

arranged to meet on a university campus. So

2:50

my grandfather asked my father to go

2:52

there because he was looking like a

2:55

student, and he

2:57

went there and he met a young man,

2:59

a student in

3:02

chemistry, and he gave

3:04

him the photos of all the family. The

3:07

student went by the name Penguin. So

3:10

he asked, okay, we are going to

3:12

change your name, and for

3:15

your profession, what do you want me to put?

3:17

Do you want to be a student? And

3:20

my father said, no, no, I can't be a student.

3:22

I need to get money to earn a living. So

3:26

say that I am a dyer. And

3:29

then the man from the resistance

3:31

was very interested. He

3:33

said a dyer, but so

3:36

that's what you are, a dyer. Are

3:38

you able to erase things? He

3:42

said, yes, of course, I'm the best at

3:45

that. And what about inks?

3:47

Are you able to erase inks?

3:49

He said, of course, I'm able

3:51

to erase anything. And

3:54

he said, okay, we, all

3:56

the resistance in France have

3:59

one problem. There

4:01

is one ink that we can't,

4:03

absolutely can't erase. It is the

4:05

Waterman ink. Waterman

4:09

was a company in Paris that manufactured

4:11

fountain pens. Do

4:13

you know how we can do with this? We

4:17

already analyzed it. It's a methyl.

4:19

It's a blue of methyl. Methylene

4:22

blue was a kind of dye. And

4:25

my father said, okay, that's very simple. You

4:28

use lactic acid. You just do

4:30

that. You will see it. We

4:32

erase it immediately. So

4:35

the man from the resistance was really,

4:37

really impressed. He said, okay, just

4:40

let us make a try

4:43

and we will contact you. Before

4:46

his family was arrested, Adolfo had worked with

4:48

a chemist at a dairy in the small

4:51

town where they lived. The

4:53

dairy would buy cream from farmers to turn

4:55

into butter. But

4:58

they would pay the farmers for the cream

5:00

based on how much fat was in it,

5:03

not by volume or by weight, to

5:05

make sure it wasn't watered down. Adolfo

5:09

remembered that the dairy chemist would

5:11

use methylene blue to figure

5:13

out how much fat was in each batch of

5:15

cream, adding it to a

5:17

sample and observing how long it took the lactic

5:19

acid in the cream to make

5:21

the dye disappear. And

5:25

when the resistance agents who specialized in

5:27

fake papers tried what

5:29

Adolfo had suggested with the

5:31

lactic acid, and it worked. So

5:34

they came back to see my father

5:37

and they said, we need

5:39

someone to manage the

5:41

lab of forging documents.

5:45

We need someone and we think it can be you.

5:49

I'm Phoebe Judge. This is criminal. Thank

5:55

you. What

6:02

was your father like as a kid? He

6:06

was very intelligent. He

6:08

was always the first

6:10

of his class and

6:12

he used to talk three different

6:15

languages and he was only seven

6:17

years old. He used to

6:19

speak Russian, Spanish and French.

6:22

So he was really, really

6:25

smart but he also was a

6:27

very shy boy, very,

6:30

very shy. Adolfo's

6:32

parents were from Russia but

6:34

they had met in Paris in 1916. His

6:38

father had been a reporter for a

6:40

socialist Jewish newspaper and

6:42

his mother had fled the mob attacks

6:44

of Jewish people in Russia, the pogroms.

6:48

The family had to flee to Argentina

6:50

because of their socialist ties. Adolfo

6:53

was born there. Before

6:55

he turned five, they moved back to France.

7:00

When Adolfo was 13 and living in

7:02

a small town called Vere, he

7:04

set up a school newspaper with a classmate. It

7:07

was the principal's idea. He

7:09

suggested it to them because they'd already finished

7:11

all their schoolwork and he thought this would be

7:13

something that would keep them from getting bored. Adolfo

7:18

and his classmate bought a cheap old

7:20

printing press. They would

7:22

go ask other printers for letters in fonts

7:24

that had gone out of style. But

7:28

soon, Adolfo had to stop going to

7:30

school. Studying

7:32

was kind of expensive and so when he was

7:34

14 years old, he had to

7:36

work. He

7:40

got a job in a factory. This was the late

7:42

1930s. In

7:45

1940, Germany invaded France.

7:48

The Nazis arrived in Vere, in

7:50

Normandy, where he used to live.

7:53

They fired him because he was a Jew. He

7:57

decided to try to find another job. Under

8:01

German occupation, there were new laws

8:03

about what jobs Jewish people could

8:05

have. Adolfo

8:07

saw an advertisement for a job

8:09

as a dyer's apprentice, mostly

8:12

dyeing old military uniforms to

8:14

make them into clothes civilians

8:16

could wear. Khaki turned dark

8:18

brown or navy. The

8:21

dyer was a chemical engineer who'd been in the

8:23

French army. Adolfo

8:25

bought the job. For

8:28

him, it was magical what

8:31

he could do with the colors,

8:33

erasing the colors, putting the colors.

8:36

So this was this was magic. It

8:39

fascinated him to see how if

8:42

you put fabric in a tub of water with

8:44

a dye that made the water look black, eventually

8:47

the clothes would turn black while

8:50

the water would become clear again. He

8:53

was like totally impressed

8:55

that he could change things

8:58

with chemistry. Adolfo

9:00

bought a chemistry book at a flea market. He

9:04

couldn't stop asking questions at work. Adolfo

9:07

remembered the dyer saying, so

9:09

far I've had employees who are happy just to

9:11

do their work well. With you, I

9:14

have to talk all the time. Adolfo

9:17

asked if he could take some dye home to

9:19

experiment with. He would try

9:22

experiments in the kitchen. But

9:24

after a few explosions, his parents said no

9:26

more chemicals in the house. I

9:29

think it combined all he

9:32

liked, mathematics, color,

9:36

artistic things, and he

9:38

wanted to continue to learn. Sometimes

9:41

people would come to the dyer asking

9:43

for help removing stains. Adolfo

9:46

remembered he got so good at removing

9:49

difficult stains that people would

9:51

come from other towns to bring him

9:53

lace gloves and silk wedding dresses to clean.

9:57

All the money he could get from his

9:59

work, He used to

10:01

spend it to buy a

10:03

chemistry lab. So,

10:05

but piece by piece, you

10:07

know, not all together. Adolpho

10:10

had seen a set of laboratory flasks

10:13

and tubes and a microscope for

10:15

sale in the window of a drugstore in town.

10:18

The pharmacist at the drugstore was

10:20

named Mr. Brancor. Adolpho

10:23

remembered Mr. Brancor showed him the

10:25

set, and they talked about chemistry.

10:30

And then Brancor agreed to

10:32

set it aside and sell it to

10:34

Adolpho, one flask at a time.

10:41

We'll be right back. Thanks to

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13:08

During the first year of the

13:10

German occupation of France, Adolfo Kaminski's

13:12

uncle, his mother's brother, assaulted

13:14

a German officer. He

13:17

escaped to Paris to hide. Adolfo's

13:20

mother would send him letters there, but

13:23

one day the family heard that the Germans

13:25

had intercepted one of her letters, which

13:28

meant they had her brother's dress. She

13:31

left immediately to go to Paris to warn

13:33

him. So she went and

13:35

took the train, and during the

13:38

way she's been pushed. They

13:43

found her body on the train tracks.

13:45

The family never found out what really happened, but

13:47

Adolfo believed she was killed by German police. Detectives believed

13:49

that she had opened the

13:54

train car door, thinking it

13:56

was a bathroom, and had fallen out. When

14:01

Sarah Kaminsky asked her father why he didn't

14:03

believe the detectives, he said, Now

14:06

you tell me, if someone told

14:08

you I'd fallen out of the train because

14:10

I'd confused the outside door with that to

14:12

the toilets, what would you say? Adolfo

14:17

Kaminsky was 15 years old when his

14:19

mother died, and

14:21

after that, he buried himself even

14:24

more deeply in his chemistry research.

14:27

It was around this time that he also started

14:30

working with the chemist at the dairy. When

14:34

his mother was killed, I

14:37

think it was

14:39

the only thing he had to

14:43

forget or not to think

14:45

too much about the death of his

14:48

mother. He'd

14:50

started making candles and bars of

14:52

soap in his makeshift laboratory, and

14:55

he would fill orders given to him by the

14:57

drugstore pharmacist, Mr. Brandkor. They

15:01

became close. Eventually

15:04

Adolfo realized that the drugstore was

15:06

just a front, and

15:09

that Mr. Brandkor was a French intelligence

15:11

agent who was involved

15:13

in sabotaging the Nazis. He

15:16

was so devastated by the death

15:19

of his mother, and he didn't know what

15:21

to do, and he wanted revenge,

15:23

and he couldn't do anything. Then

15:28

this man told

15:30

him, okay, if you want to help,

15:33

you can help with your chemistry. Mr.

15:36

Brandkor gave Adolfo small jobs at

15:38

first. He created chemical products

15:40

that would rust the railways and

15:43

began making detonators, small

15:45

devices used to set off explosions. It

15:49

was a year later, in 1943,

15:52

when Adolfo Kamensky and his

15:54

family were arrested and taken

15:56

to Droncie. The

15:58

family was released after three months because

16:01

they had citizenship in another country,

16:03

Argentina, which had a diplomatic

16:05

agreement with the Nazis. Once

16:09

they got out, Adolfo met the

16:11

resistance agent, Penguin, who

16:13

was excited he knew how to remove Waterman, Inc. Penguin

16:18

introduced Adolfo to other members of

16:20

the resistance. Two

16:22

men who went by Giraffe and Heron,

16:25

they gave him a blank ID card. He

16:28

filled it out with false information, and

16:30

he was in, a member of the

16:32

resistance. So

16:34

the network he was in

16:37

was supposed to consider him as

16:39

a child. He

16:41

was supposed to be hidden in the

16:44

countryside, in farmers' houses.

16:46

But then they said, okay, even if

16:48

you are not an adult, if

16:51

you agree, you will be the boss of the lab and

16:53

you will stay with us. When

16:56

he got to take a close look at the methods they were

16:58

using in their lab, crayons and

17:00

correction fluid and bleach, he

17:03

knew he could help. He began to

17:05

work and to say, okay, you have to stop doing like

17:07

that. We are going to do like this,

17:09

like this, like this. And he

17:11

changed all the lab. The

17:13

lab was making all kinds of documents. If

17:17

you wanted to hide as a Jew, an

17:20

identity card was not enough.

17:23

Absolutely not, because, you

17:25

know, everybody had food cards. So your

17:27

food cards had to be forged too.

17:30

And if you wanted to be sure to pretend

17:32

not to be a Jew, what

17:35

would be really good is to

17:37

have a baptism certificate, for

17:39

example, things like that, you see.

17:42

So to save one person, you

17:45

needed more than three papers.

17:48

Using Adolpho, there were five people who worked

17:50

in the lab. None of

17:52

them were more than 24 years old. They

17:56

kept the location of the lab a secret, even

17:58

from other members of the resistance. They

18:01

had a lot of chemistry in the lab

18:03

and it could smell and it

18:05

could, you know, it's not easy to hide. So

18:09

they used to say that they were artists

18:11

and that's why they had so many chemistry

18:14

and painting and they used to

18:16

put all their artwork on

18:19

the walls. You

18:21

know, they used to make a

18:23

very, very easy art, I mean,

18:25

and to pretend they were good artists,

18:27

but behind the paintings they

18:30

could hide the papers, the documents. They

18:33

would make as many as 500 papers in a week. Anyone

18:38

who needed forged documents knew to ask

18:40

someone in the resistance and

18:42

the police knew it too. The

18:45

rule was that normally the

18:47

people from the lab would

18:50

never deliver directly to

18:52

someone because it was too dangerous.

18:55

Instead, Adolfo would meet up with

18:57

a liaison agent, often

18:59

a woman. They would meet

19:01

in public and pretend to be on a date. Adolfo

19:04

would bring a rose to make it look real

19:07

and hand over the documents and

19:09

the woman would get them to the people who needed them.

19:13

Often the documents were fake papers for

19:15

Jewish children who needed to be moved to

19:18

safer locations. They would take

19:20

a hundred children and

19:22

pretend it's a summer camp or

19:24

something like that and bring them to the

19:26

south with the forged documents. Occasionally,

19:29

Adolfo would deliver the documents

19:32

himself, especially if

19:34

there was immediate danger. He

19:37

remembered one, a woman alone.

19:41

I think she didn't have a husband

19:43

anymore. Maybe he died at the war

19:45

and she was the mother of four

19:48

little children. When

19:50

Adolfo offered her papers, she

19:52

didn't want them. She asked why

19:54

they should hide when they'd done nothing wrong.

19:57

And he begged her to take the... To

20:00

take the documents, he said that his

20:03

network was able to hide her children

20:05

and that she continued to say no,

20:07

no, no And this

20:09

is something he remembered until

20:11

the rest of his life I

20:15

mean it must have been very hard I

20:17

mean working all night with these documents going

20:19

out and running around putting himself in and

20:21

he was young too This has been

20:24

really hard for him Yes,

20:27

it was really hard for him

20:29

What he said was that it

20:32

was hard but not hard

20:34

as if he was doing

20:36

nothing So he

20:39

always said that if he had

20:42

done nothing, maybe he

20:44

would have not survived And

20:46

even with the fear, sometimes

20:49

in the lab they had happy

20:52

moments Like being

20:54

teenagers together And

20:57

he had the same danger, doing

21:00

something or doing nothing The

21:03

people who were deported sent

21:05

to death camps, they did nothing

21:07

wrong So taking risks or

21:09

not for him was the

21:12

same danger And

21:17

one day he received the order

21:20

to make documents for 300

21:22

children But

21:24

they had only three days and it

21:26

was absolutely impossible They

21:29

only had three days because they'd heard that

21:32

the Nazis were planning raids on

21:34

ten homes for children They

21:37

needed to make at least three documents per

21:39

child By

21:42

the end of the first day, they'd finished less than a quarter of

21:44

the documents they needed Adolpho didn't sleep He

21:47

told himself, it's a simple calculation

21:50

In one hour I can make 30 blank documents

21:53

If I sleep for an hour, 30 people will die

22:00

By the morning of the third day, they'd finished over

22:02

800 documents. But

22:05

at the very end, he fainted. His

22:08

colleague told him to go to sleep, quote,

22:11

we need a forger, not

22:13

another corpse. Later,

22:16

in August of 1944,

22:19

Adolfo heard that his friend Penguin had

22:21

been arrested with a group of 30 children

22:24

and sent to Auschwitz. And

22:27

then, French and American armies arrived

22:30

to liberate Paris from the German

22:32

army. There was fighting in

22:34

the streets. Adolfo volunteered

22:36

to help the French army carry the

22:38

wounded on stretchers. He

22:41

never saw Penguin again. What

22:45

did he do after liberation?

22:49

After the liberation, you

22:52

know, all the people who were part of

22:54

the lab were students, so

22:56

they went back to their studies. He

23:01

had no studies. He had

23:03

nothing to do. He was, like, very lonely,

23:05

and he

23:07

went to see his father. His father

23:09

was living in a very, very small

23:11

room, and something

23:13

was very broken. He

23:16

didn't know what to do. Then

23:19

Adolfo heard from someone in the

23:21

French army's secret service. They

23:24

needed a forger. Paris

23:26

was liberated, but the war was

23:28

not finished. And in

23:31

Germany, the camps were

23:33

still burning people, and so

23:36

they needed to send secret

23:38

agents in Germany to

23:41

bring proof of the horrors

23:44

in the death camps. So

23:47

then he went back to forgery. Adolfo's

23:50

job was to meet with French

23:52

intelligence agents before they went to Germany.

23:55

The agents would try to find

23:57

and infiltrate lesser-known concentration camps. especially

24:01

ones where Nazis conducted medical experiments

24:03

on the people they imprisoned. The

24:07

agents were supposed to collect evidence of their

24:09

crimes before they could distribute.

24:13

Adolfo would talk with each agent about

24:15

their real past and then would help

24:18

them come up with a fake backstory.

24:21

Then he would make the German documents to back it

24:23

up. IDs but

24:25

also receipts, library cards, movie

24:27

tickets, letters from fictional fiancees,

24:30

prescriptions. The

24:33

French army started paying for all

24:35

of Adolfo's expenses. They

24:37

put him up in a hotel and gave him a

24:40

whole floor of a building to work. He

24:42

had a private car and a driver. He

24:45

said, I had become a

24:47

state forger, a new status. He

24:52

had to keep working under a fake name and

24:54

he told his family and friends from the

24:56

resistance. He was just a government clerk. Decades

25:01

later when Sarah Kaminski was growing up in the

25:03

1980s, she says her father

25:06

wouldn't talk much about his life during the

25:08

war. I mean my

25:10

father didn't want to talk about this because

25:14

even if he saved lives it

25:16

was with an

25:18

illegal way, in an

25:20

illegal way. He

25:23

wanted to raise us as good men

25:25

and women and he wanted us to

25:28

obey the laws. Did

25:31

he ever teach you to forge anything? No, of

25:34

course not. He would never

25:36

teach me to forge anything or

25:39

to lie or anything like that. What

25:43

happened was, I think I was 12 or

25:46

13 years old and

25:48

I brought a bad mark and

25:51

my parents were supposed to sign

25:53

it. I didn't

25:55

know that he had

25:57

been a forger. Sarah

26:00

decided to try to forge her mother's signature

26:02

on the bad grade. So I

26:04

tried, you know, I made tests

26:07

and I tried to make it

26:10

the same. And then

26:12

I put my false signature

26:15

on the paper and

26:17

my mother discovered it. She

26:19

was so upset and very unhappy and

26:22

she said, okay, but you will see

26:24

when your father will see that. I

26:28

went to hide in my room and

26:31

really, like I

26:34

was ashamed, very ashamed. And my

26:36

father came back from work. He

26:38

sat on the bed and I thought he was

26:41

going to be as upset as my mother and

26:43

he just began to

26:45

laugh, but to laugh out loud. He

26:47

couldn't stop laughing. So I was really,

26:49

really surprised. Why was he laughing like

26:51

that? And he just

26:53

told me, Sarah, how do you

26:56

see this signature? You

26:58

see that it is much too small. It's not

27:00

good. It's not good work. And,

27:02

you know, I didn't know yet

27:04

that he had been a forger. But

27:06

later I just thought that

27:09

he was, you know, maybe

27:11

disappointed and that I would

27:13

never make a good forger. After

27:19

the war ended, Adolfo Kaminsky

27:21

tried to find jobs as a photographer or

27:23

as a dyer. He

27:26

worked for a company that made large photographs

27:28

for movie sets. Then

27:30

he opened his own photography lab. He

27:33

later told Sarah that it was difficult to

27:35

adjust to normal life. My

27:38

nightmares were haunted by too many faces,

27:40

he said. But

27:43

he was still approached to make forged

27:45

documents and he continued to agree.

27:49

Was it hard for him to keep up

27:52

family and relationships because he was always

27:54

getting pulled into these secret

27:57

projects that he couldn't talk about? Yes,

28:01

all his life he could

28:04

not do things as anyone

28:06

normal. One of his ex-girlfriends

28:10

was sure that he was cheating, you

28:12

know, he was maybe somewhere with

28:14

women or the same things like that, but no,

28:17

he was hiding in a lab making

28:20

forged documents. One

28:23

time he even planned to move to America

28:25

for a girlfriend, her name was

28:28

Sarah Elizabeth. But

28:30

then he was approached by a group called

28:32

the Suitcase Carriers who were

28:35

helping the National Liberation Front or

28:37

FLN. They

28:39

needed his help forging documents for

28:41

Algerians, fighting for independence from the

28:43

French. Sarah Elizabeth was

28:45

waiting for him in New York and

28:48

he couldn't tell her why he was

28:50

not joining her. So

28:53

he was just trying to send her

28:55

letters to say, I will come, but

28:58

later let me time, let

29:00

me some time. And she was answering,

29:03

well, what are you doing? I'm waiting for you.

29:05

My parents are supposed to meet you. We're

29:08

going to marry. What are you doing? And he

29:10

couldn't say the truth. So

29:13

she just thought that he was, you

29:16

know, far from the eyes, far

29:18

from the heart. So

29:20

she sent a last letter in

29:23

which she drew herself

29:26

walking far and her footprints in

29:28

the snow of New York, you

29:30

know, to say goodbye

29:32

and leaving the relationship. We'll

29:40

be right back. Thank

29:50

you. Support.

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criminal. Adolfo

32:11

Kaminsky still had the stamps,

32:14

sample IDs, and engraving plates he'd used

32:16

to make documents in the 40s. But

32:20

by the late 1950s, the

32:22

way official legal documents looked kept

32:25

changing. There was

32:27

one very famous document who

32:29

was really supposed to be

32:32

unforgible. And

32:34

this was the Switzerland

32:37

passport. Once

32:39

he was given two days by

32:41

the suitcase carriers to create two

32:43

Swiss passports. He wasn't sure

32:45

he could do it. The

32:48

cover of the Swiss passport was made

32:50

from an unusual material. He'd

32:52

never heard of anyone being able to replicate it. The

32:56

first day and night, he tried mixing

32:59

together paper with cellulose and glue in

33:01

different amounts, then drawing it

33:03

in sheets. But nothing

33:05

was working. He couldn't

33:07

sleep because of that. So even

33:09

if he's dreams, he was still trying

33:12

to find a solution. So he went to

33:14

sleep. And when he woke up, he had

33:16

the solution. He had

33:19

a dream about cutting up pieces of gauze

33:21

for bandaging wounds and adding them to the

33:23

paper mixture. And

33:25

that worked. But

33:27

what he didn't know is that

33:29

the man who asked him for the

33:31

passport didn't really need this

33:33

passport. He just made a joke

33:36

with another man of the network and

33:38

said, okay, this man, this

33:40

forger, is able to forge anything,

33:42

but we are going to see

33:45

if he's able to do that.

33:48

And they were sure that he would

33:50

say, okay, I'm not able to do

33:52

it. So they were so surprised that

33:54

he was able to do it, that

33:56

they never told him during all

33:58

the wars that didn't tell him. him that

34:00

it was just a bet. So

34:03

they told him later. By

34:06

now, Adolfo was in his mid-30s. He'd

34:09

been forging since he was 18. His

34:12

work made it difficult to be close to people.

34:16

So every time he fell in love

34:18

with the woman, she just

34:23

left him. Adolfo

34:25

had gotten married after World War II

34:27

and had two kids, Marta

34:30

and Serge. Two

34:32

years in, his marriage fell apart. His

34:35

ex-wife had custody of the children as they grew up.

34:38

But Adolfo was supposed to visit on weekends

34:40

and take them on walks. Often,

34:43

he wouldn't show up. Sometimes

34:46

he wouldn't be in touch for long periods

34:48

of time. He could

34:50

disappear for weeks, sometimes

34:54

four months. And once

34:56

he disappeared during two years and the

34:59

kids, they were around maybe

35:01

12 years old, they

35:04

really thought that he was dead. The

35:10

Algerians won independence from France in 1962.

35:15

Adolfo finished up his work with the suitcase

35:17

carriers. But new contacts

35:19

started coming to him with requests from

35:21

resistance movements around the world. In

35:24

Spain, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela,

35:27

Angola, Guinea-Bissau. Also,

35:30

American deserters in Vietnam

35:33

and the African National Congress in South

35:35

Africa. He didn't want

35:37

to be paid by the networks because he wanted

35:39

to be sure to be able to say yes

35:42

or to say no. Adolfo

35:45

thought that if he relied on forging for

35:47

income, he might have to say yes

35:49

to things he disagreed with. So

35:51

because he was not paid, he had to work. So he

35:53

used the lab of

35:55

photography during the day, was the forgering

35:57

lab during the night, you see. But

36:01

he really had a lot

36:04

of problem with money. He

36:08

stayed poor. He

36:10

later told Sarah, he felt like if

36:12

he took money, quote, I'd

36:14

become a mercenary. It

36:17

was like he had debt because

36:21

he was a survivor. So

36:23

in Drancy, he

36:25

saw thousands and

36:27

thousands and thousands of people going

36:29

to the death camps. And

36:32

he saw his best friend going

36:36

to the death camps. And he

36:38

couldn't do anything. It was like even

36:43

at the very end of his life, it

36:46

is something for which he

36:49

felt a lot of guilt.

36:52

I would say that the guilt of being a

36:55

survivor and

36:58

the guilt of

37:02

being incapable of doing anything,

37:04

you see. So

37:07

he had to save other people. You

37:11

know, it was a need and

37:14

not something he was proud of. He

37:30

had one liaison

37:32

agent and it was

37:34

Janet. Janet was like

37:36

him. Janet was two. She

37:39

was hiding during World War II with her mother.

37:42

Janessa had worked with Adolfo during the

37:44

Algerian War. And she

37:47

continued for the liberation movements

37:49

of South America.

37:53

She was working for Guatemala

37:56

Network. And she really wanted

37:58

to go there. to fight and to

38:01

fight with his weapon. And

38:03

they were very close, my father and her, but

38:06

he didn't like that.

38:09

He didn't want her to go. But she

38:12

still asked him for a forged passport. And

38:15

he said no, but she insisted and

38:18

he gave her the documents. Some

38:21

time later, he was reading the newspaper Le

38:23

Monde in a cafe. And he

38:26

saw an article about a young French woman who

38:28

had shot herself when the police knocked on her

38:30

door. He was sure

38:33

it was Jeanette. Her

38:35

name was not in the newspaper, but of

38:37

course he understood with

38:39

the description of this French woman. He

38:43

knew it could be only her. How

38:47

did he respond to that? He

38:51

wanted to stop. He

38:53

wanted to stop everything. He was tired. But the problem

38:55

is like

38:59

when you have begin

39:01

something, it's really, really hard to

39:03

stop. So he wanted

39:05

to have a normal life, but it

39:07

was impossible because all the people he

39:09

knew were people in Clonestiniti doing what

39:11

he was doing. But

39:15

then something happened, which

39:19

forced him to stop. Adulpha

39:22

had received a request for South

39:24

African passports, documents

39:26

for anti-apartheid militants. A

39:29

liaison agent brought him an example

39:31

passport, one that seemed borrowed

39:34

or stolen to base the copies on.

39:37

The photo on the passport was of a black South

39:39

African man, around 30 years old. And

39:43

one side of the passport cover

39:45

was bent. Adulpha

39:48

studied the passport and told his liaison

39:50

agent that he could do it. But

39:53

then he stopped hearing from the agent. His

39:57

liaison agent disappeared for one month and then took

39:59

the phone. months and so he

40:01

was like very anxious

40:04

about that. And then another

40:06

man from another network who

40:09

he was not used to work with came

40:12

to see him and said, do

40:16

you still make force documents? And

40:19

then the man gave him a model

40:21

and said, can you try to

40:24

reproduce this? He gave him

40:26

the model and it was the same model.

40:29

It was the same man on the picture. It was

40:31

the same name. It was exactly the same so

40:35

this was really weird because he

40:37

had given the passport back to

40:39

his liaison agent

40:42

which had disappeared. Adolfo

40:45

was nervous. He told the man

40:47

no, he couldn't reproduce the passport.

40:50

And then he went to Algeria for a

40:53

vacation and met up with an old

40:55

friend who lived there. And the

40:57

man told him, do you still make forgery?

41:00

So my father said no. And

41:03

he's a big because you

41:05

need to help the South African. And

41:08

I have a passport. Maybe you could

41:10

try. And he gave him the passport

41:12

and it was the same again, the

41:15

same passport. So this was, he

41:20

never knew what happened, but he

41:22

was sure that something was like

41:25

a trap. It was

41:27

impossible that the

41:30

same passport could be brought to him

41:32

from three different people not living in

41:36

the same country. So he was

41:38

kind of sure that the

41:40

police or another network was

41:42

trying to find the

41:45

reporter. Adolfo went back to France and decided he

41:48

had to leave the country. He'd

41:53

been forging documents for almost

41:55

30 years. He

41:58

moved to Algeria and got a job teaching

42:00

photography at a university. And

42:04

then he met my mother. Sarah's

42:06

mother, Leila, was an activist

42:08

campaigning for the decolonization of

42:10

Africa. Adolfo

42:13

and Leila got married and had three

42:15

children. Sarah is the

42:17

youngest. As

42:20

Sarah got older, her father told her more

42:22

about his past. He'd

42:24

always said he would write a book, but

42:26

never did. So Sarah started

42:28

writing one with him instead. She

42:31

tried to track down people he'd worked with as

42:33

a forger. What

42:36

was it like meeting people from his past?

42:40

The thing is that the man they

42:43

knew was not the man I knew.

42:47

I knew a very tender

42:50

father, very quiet

42:53

and patient. And

42:56

what they told me is that he

42:58

was very strict. And

43:01

the people I met from

43:03

his past were like, all

43:06

of them were heroes. All the

43:08

time I was thinking, okay, this man should have

43:10

a book too. And for this

43:12

woman, I should write two books. So

43:15

of course I was not

43:17

able to do that. But it's so impressive

43:20

to meet this kind of people who

43:22

stayed in the shadow and

43:25

had this kind

43:27

of life, unimaginable

43:30

life. Adolfo

43:33

Kaminsky died last year in January

43:35

of 2023. He

43:37

was 97. One

43:41

obituary read, Mr.

43:43

Kaminsky estimated that the underground network

43:45

he was part of helped

43:49

save 10,000 people, most of

43:51

them children. When

43:54

we put him in the

43:56

grave, then there Was a sunshine. The

44:01

center for hims jets right

44:03

on his grace. Ah, and

44:05

everybody lost later. On t

44:08

his his his gutsy his his last.

44:12

Syncing. Criminalise

44:32

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