Adolfo Kaminski was a Jew of Russian origin who was born in Argentina – In World War II he supplied the Resistance with forged documents – At 17 he joined the French resistance
The humanist photographer Adolfo Kaminski, a man with a fictional life, the “king of forged documents” in the service of the French Resistance and the anti-colonial struggle, died today at the age of 97, as announced by his daughter.
Kaminski was “a humanitarian, a photographer, a resister, an expert in making fake documents,” summarized Sarah Kaminski, who has told his story in the book Adolfo Kaminski, The Life of a Forger.
A Jew of Russian descent, born in Argentina, Kaminsky was a “talented photographer who became a genius forger, supplying forged documents to the Resistance and persecuted Jews” while post-war he put his talents to the service of other struggles, hailed the Holocaust Memorial Foundation .
From the Resistance to the anti-colonial movements, o Adolfo Kaminski he lived underground and supplied fake documents to almost all the races of the 20th century. When he settled with his family in France he dreamed of becoming a painter. But at the age of 17 he joined the French Resistance, after being released from the Drancy internment camp. He used his knowledge of chemistry and photography to discolor ink and make fake papers in an illegal lab, saving thousands of lives.
It was the beginning of a career that lasted three decades – at the risk of his life and health. At the time he was posing as a photographer, a banal occupation for the Cartier Laten, and was known by the nickname “Mr. Joseph”.
“I had the opportunity to save human lives. I worked night and day, at the microscope. I lost an eye, but I don’t regret anything,” he told AFP in 2012.
After her capitulation Nazi Germany helped Jews who escaped the concentration camps immigrate to Palestine.
In the following years, he became the forger of all anti-colonial, anti-fascist struggles: from the FLN in Algeria, the anti-Francoists in Spain, the opponents of the dictator Salazar in Portugal, the anti-dictatorship struggle in Greece, the Prague Spring, the anti-dictatorship struggles in Latin America , Guinea, Angola, American deserters from the Vietnam War – he even created a fake ID for Daniel Cohn-Bedit in 1968…
In 1971 he ended his career as a forger, fearing that he had been ensnared by South African apartheid authorities. His photographic, humanistic work was exhibited at the Museum of Art and History of Judaism in 2019.
From his marriage to an Algerian Tuareg, he had five children, including the well-known French rapper Roche.
RES-EMP
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