Four months is a long time. First of all there were the congratulations and the ‘we’ll come and see you, that’s a promise’, then life went on and political discussions came to the fore again. For time was passing, and the confrontations in Algeria were stepping up. I was more and more concerned but still hadn’t found a way of becoming more involved.
The conflict set off a series of consequences in France. Paris was beginning to feel the effect of the Algerian drama: the hunt for racial characteristics, constant police checks. Personally I didn’t know any Algerians, but my South American friends told me they were often taken in for questioning because of their Mediterranean appearance. To me, it was absolutely intolerable that the French authorities should be hunting for people with a swarthy complexion, just as the Nazis had been on the lookout for the Jewish nose a few years previously.
Toward the end of 1957 the first reports on the use of torture by the French army and police in Algeria appeared. We knew about it already, but this time it was no longer a matter of isolated actions. Several high-ranking officers had refused to be party to it and had even asked to be relieved of their duties. There were some of us, former members of the Resistance, who saw the specter of the Gestapo reappearing. The victims were different but the methods the same. The ‘suicide’ of the lawyer Ali Boumendjel6 and the disappearance of Maurice Audin7 confirmed the fact that in Algeria people were being tortured and killed with impunity. On top of that there was the censorship. Anyone who wrote even a brief article on the question or on the independence of Algeria was immediately arrested, their home searched, their writings confiscated and destroyed. I was very worried about young people, the deserters who were risking being sent to prison for life by following their conscience. But I was even more worried for those who didn’t have the courage to choose insubordination. What was going to become of them?
Torturers? Heroes who’d given their lives for their country? In either case France was sacrificing her children for nothing, for Algeria had long been lost.
At that time I was a regular in the cafés of Montparnasse and Boulevard Saint-Germain. I went to listen to South American music in L’Escale, to have a coffee in the Flore, the Sélect, La Rhumerie martiniquaise and, above all, in the Old Navy, a meeting place where many filmmakers, journalists and other intellectuals would drop in. I would be there every evening from eight o’clock onward. I had my table there, received mail and telephone calls, arranged meetings, met my friends, mostly painters and film people, the journalist Georges Arnaud, the writer Arthur Adamov, a fair number of wannabes full of ambition and lots of pretty girls. Concerned about what was going on in Algeria, we talked passionately about what had to be done, but in concrete terms we didn’t do very much.
In the autumn of 1957 I celebrated my thirty-second birthday. Marcelline Loridan—a friend I met there to whom I told my life-story after she’d told me hers; a survivor of Birkenau concentration camp, she had come back at seventeen, a tattoo forever engraved on her skin, full of the energy of desperation—introduced me to Annette Roger. A doctor from Marseilles, Annette was a pretty blonde, slim and elegant, with tremendous drive. We very quickly hit it off, and she was happy to accept my suggestion that she come over the next day to pose for a series of portraits I was working on.
It was a rather strange photographic session. There was no question about the quality of the model; she was absolutely perfect. The truth is that we hardly worked at all. Annette was the sort of person who is very, very curious. She wanted to discuss things. I quickly realized that Marcelline must have told her about the stuff I’d done with forged documents during the Occupation, for she immediately brought it up. Since she wanted to know the details, I told her everything in a long monologue. The Second World War. The army secret service. The Haganah and the Stern group. When I’d finished there were a few seconds of silence between us. Then she took a deep breath.
“And now? Could you still make forged papers?” she asked, looking me straight in the eye.
“If it’s justified by the cause.”
With the faintest of smiles, she said, “I think you’re the man we need. How do you feel about meeting Francis Jeanson?”
Francis Jeanson, called ‘the Professor’, I already knew by name. Anyone in the left-wing intellectual circles around me who was interested in the Algerian question had read or heard about the book he’d written together with his wife: L’Algérie hors la loi (Algeria outside the law). And now and then I used to read Jean-Paul Sartre’s philosophical journal Les Temps modernes (Modern Times), and I knew that he had been its editor. I’d also heard that he’d fallen out with Camus for having written a not very favorable review of his novel The Stranger. While personally I saw nothing wrong with the literary quality of Camus’ book, I’d also argued with him some years previously in the course of a heated conversation about Algeria in which I’d criticized him for being so lukewarm about it. I was, therefore, quite keen to put a face to the name. The encounter took place in Marcelline’s apartment in the Latin Quarter. When I entered the room where he was waiting for me, I was surprised to find I recognized him. A few years previously I’d been in the apartment of Romain Rolland’s widow, where I was making reproductions of some archive photographs for a book on her husband’s life, when she was visited by a rather timid journalist who wanted to interview her. It was Francis Jeanson. By now there was nothing timid about Francis. On the contrary he displayed striking determination and energy.
Francis was an astonishing character. An intellectual, an existentialist philosopher, his doctrine was based on the idea that thought should not be dissociated from action or, if you prefer, that anti-colonialism should not be restricted to standing on the sidelines keeping the score. He took an interest in the cause of the Algerians at two points in his life. First of all under the Occupation. Having enlisted in the Free French Army of Africa during the Second World War, he found that the majority of French Algerians were Vichyists, even collaborationists. Then he went back there with his wife in 1948. He wanted to live closer to the Muslims, to share in their daily life. That was the time when he met some militant nationalists. He emphasizes that his decision to commit himself totally to them was taken as a Frenchman, in order to keep alive the possibility of Franco-Algerian friendship, to give a wake-up call to the French left wing and equally because, like me, he was convinced from the very beginning that the people of Algeria would achieve independence, with the help of France or against her. His idea was to help the Algerians win the war as quickly as possible, so as to avoid the pointless loss of human lives on both sides. He asked me if I was willing to join the network.
“Of course,” I replied.
“Yes, but to really join us,” he said.
“What do you mean, really?”
“Full time. Do the printing. Be able to respond to urgent requests. Lots of documents, different nationalities. And the famous Swiss passport, impossible to forge.”
Francis then set off on an interminable list of the forged documents they would need. I’d never imagined their requirements would be so important. Francis’ voice was like a muffled hubbub in the background, while my thoughts were with Sarah Elizabeth, who was waiting for me in the United States…
One week later I had a rendezvous with Jeanson’s right-hand man in La Rhumerie martiniquaise.
“Daniel,” he said by way of introduction, as he stood up to shake my hand before inviting me to take a seat.
Very middle class. Tall and strong, elegant in a suit and dark tie, suntanned, as if he’d just come back from vacation, distinguished looking, a fine-leather briefcase on his knees. He finished off his whisky before calling the waiter. A second whisky for him. For me a white coffee.
We were immediately on friendly terms, calling each other ‘tu’ right from the start, and we introduced ourselves briefly. ‘Daniel’—Jacques Vignes by his real name—came from Bordeaux and was a childhood friend of Francis Jeanson. He was a quiet man with a wife and family,
a keen sailor, a specialist in yacht racing and a sports journalist when the fancy took him, and before joining the network he’d managed, with no great enthusiasm, a small family business selling bathroom furniture. He told me he hadn’t hesitated for one second when Francis Jeanson had asked him to be his right-hand man and to take charge of all the organization of the network and the coordination of the escape routes. And for that his main problem was crossing borders. Until then, in order to get money, Algerian leaders, wanted people or deserters out of the country, Daniel had always used the Spanish border. At that time, when the war was intensifying, the number of deserters increasing, fund-raising becoming more widespread and systematic, it was a matter of some urgency to increase the access routes using all the possibilities offered by neighboring countries: Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Germany and Belgium. The money that was essential to support the insurrection was collected, sorted and counted in France, but could only be deposited in Switzerland. So from that point on Daniel would be my contact and would soon be needing Spanish, Italian, Swiss, German, Belgian and French papers for wanted people and the network’s agents whose job it was to cross borders.
When I left, he gave me an envelope containing his first order, insisted on paying for our drinks and arranged for us to meet again in two days’ time.
As I made my way home, I felt a bit perplexed. What did I feel about this first meeting? We’d talked for a little over an hour. Like Jeanson, like myself and all those who’d joined the network, he had taken on the commitment as a Frenchman, for the sake of the Franco-Algerian friendship that had to be established because the French values of ‘liberty-equality-fraternity’ ought to inform the campaign, because it was inevitable that Algeria would eventually be independent, and we had to help them win the battle as quickly as possible if we wanted to stop the waste, stop sending our boys over there to die, and so that we didn’t entirely lose the trust of our Algerian brothers. His convictions were sincere and his reading of events pertinent, and yet there was something that bothered me. I found it impossible to assess this first contact as positive. When I’d left, he was on his third whisky. I had the impression his voice was no longer clear, that he was stumbling over his words, stammering… I don’t know, what he said was still coherent, but three whiskies in the morning? Could the organization of a network rest on his shoulders? I was skeptical. To be honest I even thought that frankly it wasn’t something that could be taken seriously. Oh, if I’d only known back then.
Remember this lesson: don’t always trust your first impressions. I’d just met one of the most efficient behind-the-scenes men I’ve known in my whole career.
In the hall of the apartment block I glance at my mail. No bills, just a letter. I could recognize that handwriting anywhere. Sarah Elizabeth’s handwriting is round and two to three times larger than anyone else’s. Immediately my heart sinks. I go up the stairs and put both the envelopes on the table. Daniel’s: A4, heavy brown paper. Sarah Elizabeth’s: cancelled U.S. stamp, white, long and slim, linen-wove, bound with Scotchtape—she’d obviously made it herself.
On the window ledge Bishken is cheeping, thinking I’ve forgotten him. I take a little piece of stale bread out of my pocket and crumble it up for him while he whistles his thanks. Like every day, he’ll eat it all, fly off and come back the next. How she loved that bird…
It’s the fourth letter I’ve had since she left. I just can’t get around to replying. In her last letter—envelope hand-painted, flesh-colored embossed cardboard, fountain pen on tracing paper inside, ten pages long because she decorates each page with illustrations and annotations—she asked, “Why don’t you write anymore? I’d like to know who’s replacing me while I’m waiting. Have you started selling your things? I tell my friends about you. Don’t forget to buy the Scotch for my father on the boat. Everyone’s looking forward to seeing you. Write back.”
What’s she going to say to me in this one? I’m not sure I want to know.
These last few days I’ve had to make one of the hardest choices possible: her or them? Love or the cause? We’d arranged everything perfectly: she would leave first to see her family while I would stay on a few months to tie up my affairs, sell everything I had and train the new photographer who was going to replace me. There was even work waiting for me over there that my boss was keeping for me in a subsidiary company. How could I tell her I wouldn’t be coming? I’d drafted hundreds of letters to explain my silence, but every time I just didn’t seem to have the strength to stick the stamp on. There were so many things to say, to explain, to reveal, and my replies were so poor, so incomplete, I’d have to go back to the beginning and start all over again. How could she, who’d never known anything about my political activities, understand my commitment?
Bishken’s gone without my noticing and without leaving a crumb. In the end I don’t open Sarah Elizabeth’s letter but drop it in a drawer to join all her other letters and all the replies I’ve drafted.
Instead I open Daniel’s. It contains a Belgian identity card and driver’s license that I’m to tamper with, not forge; that is, I just have to replace the photos and change the dates of birth and the professions. Using documents belonging to someone else, stolen, lent or ‘lost’ with their agreement, is like the work I did when I first joined the Resistance. Just tinkering. I have to analyze the ink, delete it and write in the new data over it. The photo’s just stapled on, but it has a relief stamp across the corner, half on the boards. The revenue stamp is half underneath the photo, and it’s been stamped as well, this time with ink, not in relief but flat.
It so happens that I still have all my chemicals, my coloring agents. I even have photoengraving plates and acid. Pure products don’t deteriorate.
I start by making a metal alloy of my own invention that has a very low melting point. Once it has liquefied, since it isn’t hot, I can just deposit the alloy on the documents—on the relief stamp, to be exact—then let it harden. For the flat stamp I use an ink that contains a little glycerin, since that makes it stay wet, and I can copy with precision the missing part of the stamp on non-absorbent tracing paper. Then I place the tracing paper on paper with a coating of gelatin, which I will use as the final stamp. Now I can replace the photo with Daniel’s.
All that is left is to change the date of birth and profession. I analyze the ink. It uses a black aniline coloring agent, a very common ink that you have to oxidize to remove, then neutralize it with ammoniac vapor. I make a solution of permanganate of potash and bisulfite of soda. The owner of the documents is an electrician, and I assume Daniel has no knowledge in that area. I have to find something else. On reflection I choose the profession of sales rep, which suits him well. With ink of the same composition I enter the new details meticulously, imitating precisely the handwriting of the clerk in the mayor’s office who filled out the papers, and that’s that. My first forged documents for the Jeanson network, the French support network for the FLN, are ready.
It’s been ages since I’ve made any forged papers. The last time was in 1950, seven years ago. The Stern group, declared illegal in Israel, had been hunted down and condemned for terrorism. As a one-off I’d supplied forged documents for my friends who were sought by the authorities and who wanted to come back to France.
Alone at home, I examine and reexamine the ID card and the driver’s license. I’m pretty satisfied. I haven’t lost my touch—the result is absolutely perfect.
1. Trauner was the preferred set designer for most American film directors working in Europe, including Billy Wilder, Fred Zinnemann, and John Huston. Trauner was also Jewish and managed to do some work with Marcel Carné during the occupation of France by the Nazis. [MM]
2. An annual fundraising event organized by L’Humanité, a daily newspaper that formerly had close links with the Communist Party but is now independent. [MM]
3. A French author (1866-1944) deeply involved in the Dreyfus affair—which revealed anti-Semitism in the French army—and in the search for
world peace. [MM]
4. Cohorts of young people who had completed their military service less than three years previously were recalled in their thousands in order to ‘pacify’ Algeria. When they got there it was war they were faced with.
5. Parti communiste internationaliste (International Communist Party), a Trotskyist organization and French section of the Fourth International. [MM]
6. An Algerian lawyer tortured and killed by the French army in Algeria in March 1957.
7. A French mathematician teaching at the University of Algiers; he was a member of the Communist Party and a militant anti-colonialist who disappeared in circumstances that have never been cleared up after having been arrested at his home by the French authorities.
9
IT WAS THE FIRST TIME Francis Jeanson and Daniel had been shown around the Rue des Jeûneurs laboratory. Usually, when one of them came to leave a request I attended to them quickly in the waiting room, took the envelope and accompanied them to the door. I wasn’t a chatty type. But that day they wanted to ‘see’.
Just imagine: a laboratory of more than a hundred and fifty square meters. First of all you have to go down a long corridor leading onto a waiting room on the left, then three doors on the right and one at the end. I’d turned the first room on the right into a darkroom for developing the film: a line of eight tanks against one wall, the same number of clocks with electric bells, set according to the processing time, and the same number of thermometers standing in the tanks. The next door leads into a kitchen that had been made into the room for the ‘machines’, containing the bulky appliances for glazing and washing the photos. At the end, the large main laboratory. Windows blocked up and covered in black, the lighting red and green. My four, big, color and black-and-white enlargers are set up on tables with drawers for the paper, films and work in progress. The drying cupboard, light boxes, broad working surfaces, a guillotine, a spectrometer, magnifying glasses, a microscope, infrared and ultraviolet lamps. Against the back wall, four aligned sinks contain basins for damping and bathing, with all the chemicals set out above them. Above everything, washing lines for drying films, photos, and documents stretch all the way down the room.
Adolfo Kaminsky Page 12