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Adolfo Kaminsky

A Forger's Life

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
The gripping true story of a life-long forger working for the French Resistance and clandestine organizations, told to his daughter.


Subject of The New York Times documentary "The Forger,"; winner of a World Press Photo Award and an Emmy Award
As seen on 60 Minutes with Anderson Cooper
"[An] engrossing literary debut. ... Writing in Adolfo's voice gives this suspenseful narrative candor and immediacy." - Kirkus Reviews
Reader's Choice AwardElle Magazine, France
Wall Street Journal's Top 10 Most Anticipated Non-Fiction: Fall Books 2016
"
Every resistance movement had its forgers, but few have told their tales. Many, like Kaminsky, were very young technicians and chemists when they began their work. Sarah Kaminsky's affectionate rendering of her father's life, with all the intricacies of his trade, is a book not just about a remarkable craftsman, but a man who strove to save 'every life that was in danger.'" -Times Literary Supplement
Best-selling author Sarah Kaminsky takes readers through her father Adolfo Kaminsky's perilous and clandestine career as a forger for the French Resistance, the FLN, and numerous other freedom movements of the twentieth century. Recruited as a young Jewish teenager for his knowledge of dyes, Kaminsky became the primary forger for the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation of Paris. Then, as a professional photographer, Kaminsky spent the next twenty-five years clandestinely producing thousands of counterfeit documents for immigrants, exiles, underground political operatives, and pacifists across the globe. Kaminsky kept his past cloaked in secrecy well into his eighties, until his daughter convinced him to share the details of the life-threatening work he did on behalf of people fighting for justice and peace throughout the world.
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    • Kirkus

      June 15, 2016
      A brilliant forger's 29-year resistance against oppression.When she was 24, Kaminsky proposed to her 78-year-old father, Adolfo Kaminsky, that she write the story of his life as a forger of documents that saved thousands of lives, beginning with French Jews under Nazi occupation and continuing to include Algerians, anti-Franco activists, and others who fought against "inequality, segregation, racism, injustice, fascism and dictatorships." He agreed but had one question: "do you know if there's a statute of limitation?" In her engrossing literary debut, Kaminsky chronicles Adolfo's career, which began when he was 17, a self-taught chemist who had gained incomparable technical knowledge from working as a dyer. Forged papers saved his own life and those of his father and siblings after they were released from the Drancy concentration camp, and soon he joined the Resistance, proving himself tireless, talented, and inventive. Once his expertise became known, he and a clandestine team were overwhelmed with orders for passports, identity papers, "travel permits, rent receipts, library card, sales slip for a store, bus or cinema ticket, railway ticket," drug prescriptions, and even crumpled personal letters: in short, "everything a man might carry with him and which, should he be caught, might save his life." After the war, he worked for a secret network to transport concentration camp survivors to Palestine, and later his forgeries aided freedom fighters in Algeria, Greece, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and across Latin America. Throughout his career, Kaminsky refused to accept payment for his work, believing that taking money would be mercenary: "I'd make working for nothing an absolute principle, for it alone guaranteed my total independence of the networks and kept my commitment incorruptible." He gave up forgery only when he knew his cover had been blown, requiring him "to vanish into thin air." Writing in Adolfo's voice gives this suspenseful narrative candor and immediacy.

      COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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Languages

  • English

Levels

  • Lexile® Measure:1020
  • Text Difficulty:6-8

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