My vacation was about to end, and I went to see Boeglin one last time to say goodbye before I left.
“Joesph, before you go there’s something I have to show you.”
He ushered me into his bedroom, took out the key to his drawer and opened it carefully. “I’ve been contacted by members of the ANC. They need forged passports so they can get their comrades out of the country. Here’s one that can serve as a model.”
I had an uneasy feeling as he handed me a South African passport with more pronounced rubbed corners on the right than on the left. I opened it…
It was the same one.
A shiver ran through me. I took a step back and handed him the passport as if it was burning my fingers.
“We’ll see about that when I come back,” I hastily replied before jumping into a taxi. That all the networks of solidarity with the emancipation of the countries of Africa—and there were lots of them—should need South African passports, fair enough. Nothing more normal. But why always the same passport, three times, in the hands of three different people who didn’t mix and didn’t even live in the same country? And by what incomprehensible piece of magnetic attraction did it always end up with me? What conclusions should I draw from all that?
Already during the preceding months I’d several times had visits from people I didn’t know who introduced themselves as coming from former friends in the FLN support network and who wanted to order documents from me. One after the other I’d politely shown them out. And then there was that dishonest guy, a former member of the FLN support network in Italy, whom I agreed to train for several months until I’d finally lost my temper when, after I’d taught him everything about documents, he asked, “And now money, how d’you make that?”
Yet I’d always done everything to remain invisible, kept out of the light, used pseudonyms and avoided political meetings. I’d never exhibited my pictures, never accepted a medal. But I had to face facts: my name had gotten around too much—now I was in danger.
A young couple were kissing, sitting on the little steps more or less opposite the Roman ruins of the Arènes de Lutèce in Rue Monge, where it joins Rue Rollin. I almost had to step over them to get past and go into the old apartment block with the creaking door and climb the stairs up to the fifth floor.
A lady with the air of an elementary school teacher, presumably his wife, let me in to a dark, modest apartment, the walls covered in books.
“Come in, come in,” she said, showing me down a corridor. She indicated a door leading into a little office that was as dark as the rest of the apartment.
Henri Curiel greeted me: “At last I can put a face to the name of ‘M. Joseph’!” he exclaimed. “It’s more than an honor to meet in flesh and blood the most discreet of behind-the-scenes operators.”
He was tall and thin. His stoop, his near-sighted eyes, made tiny by the effect of his thick lenses, his fragile look and his professorial tone had not surprisingly earned him the nickname of the ‘Old Man’.
“How long have we been working together without ever having met?” he went on. “In 1959, wasn’t it? Twelve years… and the work we’ve done for our oppressed brothers. To what do I owe the honor of your visit?”
“The same passport three times.”
He observed me with a questioning look on his face as I put my large suitcase down on the table before opening it.
“All of this is for you. My stamps, all my pages of calculations and formulas for coloring, blank documents, the models for each document, a machine for heating plastic-coated covers. Look after it all. And I’ve more stuff for you. When can I bring it around?” Curiel slumped into his armchair without bothering to conceal his annoyance.
It was on the plane coming home from France that I’d made the decision to retire, convinced that if I waited for the solution to the enigma of that damn passport, it was in prison that I’d find it. And locked away in a cell, I’d be no use to anyone.
Boeglin had mentioned a two-year post available in his department of the SNS. At first I’d said no. Then, when he handed me the passport, I thought, “Why not.” But just for one year.
My cover had been blown; there was no other word for it. All I could do now was to vanish into thin air, at least for long enough for the intelligence services to forget me. And then I’d done the math. At forty-six I’d been a forger since I was seventeen. Almost thirty years. Surviving that long was something of a miracle in itself.
I knew that my disappearance would be a blow for the Old Man’s organization, which was why, when we met, I agreed to take on the training of two apprentice forgers that Mattéi could call on after my forced retirement. As for the anti-Franco Spaniards, I’d already trained enough young forgers for them to be able to manage in the meantime.
My children were grown up, and now they could come and see me as often as they liked. I was single. I owned nothing. All I had to do was to terminate the lease of my apartment and put my firm on ice. M. Petit had done that before when I’d had to flee to Belgium; he’d see to it again.
At the end of December I flew to Algiers with the intention of returning to my life as a forger in a year’s time. But I never made any more forged documents, and I spent ten years in Algeria, where I met a young Algerian woman, a law student who had volunteered as an activist for the Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). That was Leïla, your mother. This time I wanted to make a new start, to live in the open, far from the shadows and the torments of clandestine struggles.
Even today I sometimes think back to my first forged document, when I was seventeen years old. Could I have imagined then that that act was going to mark my life forever? At that time it was the Resistance. For many, that ended with the Liberation. Not for me. My life as a forger is one long, uninterrupted resistance for, after the Nazis, I continued to resist inequality, segregation, racism, injustice, fascism and dictatorships.
I know that there are many people who can’t understand my commitment to causes after the end of the Second World War. Since I wasn’t in danger anymore, why continue to take the risk of being put in prison or assassinated for such far-away conflicts?
But my involvement in all these struggles was just the logical continuation of what I’d done during the Resistance. In 1944 I saw that freedom could be gained by the determination and courage of a handful of people. As long as it didn’t go against honor and human values, a clandestine struggle was a serious, effective means and worthy of consideration.
For thirty years, in my own way and with the only weapons at my disposal—technical knowledge, ingenuity and unshakable utopian ideals—I had fought against a reality that was too harrowing to observe or suffer without doing anything about it. Thanks to my conviction that I had the power to alter the course of things, that there was a better world to be made and that I could make a contribution. A world in which no one would need a forger. It’s still my dream.
1. National Iron and Steel Corporation. [MM]
Epilogue
IN DECIDING TO WRITE about my father’s life I deliberately chose to focus on his years of combat alone and to end the narrative in 1971, when he gave up all clandestine political activities. I thought that his other life, the one of which I was part, would only be of interest to his family and close friends. However, when I wrote THE END, there were still some questions left open. Of course I knew his reasons for giving up, but what had happened afterward?
I decided to ask him some more questions.
I arrived in Algiers a few days after the beginning of 1972. A new year, a new life, a new departure. I taught photographic techniques, photoengraving and printing to specially selected students from among the most talented ones at the Algiers College of Art.
I was supposed to be going back to Paris at the start of 1973, but a year passes quickly… I felt fine. I hung around a bit. Then there came the day when a friend in the MLPA asked me to go by car to pick up an activist called Leïla, your mother. A black-skinned woman from the south
of Algeria, daughter of a progressive imam, she was extremely beautiful and, I have to say, had many admirers. She was very cultured, was studying law at the University of Algiers, campaigned for the decolonization of Africa and was very interested in contemporary art and photography. It’s art that brought us together.
The desire to appeal to her spurred me to imagine a different future. Suddenly, when I’d never thought of it before, I was itching to start everything afresh. I was aware that I’d been incredibly fortunate to escape going to prison, being killed. I drew up a balance sheet. After all, had I not spent enough time as a clandestine, hidden, behind-the-scenes operator giving others life and liberty, without ever concerning myself with my own?
We got married. Your brother Atahualpa was born, then José, then you—it was as if, at the age of fifty—I’d been given a bonus life.
“But then why come back to France ten years later?”
That was Leïla’s choice. She sensed that the wave of religious fundamentalism wasn’t going to be short-lived. I didn’t see anything coming, but she did. As the days passed she noticed how attitudes were getting stricter. She was afraid for you three, ‘our little half-castes’, she was afraid for me, ‘the Jew’, and for herself, a liberated woman who’d married me. We had hope that our mixture would be your wealth; now it was putting you in danger. After a hurried departure, we landed in France in 1982 with no baggage, no work, but three young children, a three-month tourist visa and the hope that things would sort themselves out quickly: foreigners, applicants for immigration, concerned that we might all be sent back to our country of origin, though we didn’t know exactly where that would be since Leïla was Algerian, you three and me…Argentine. When I came back, I saw Georges Mattéi in La Clos des lilas again, just like old times. He’d continued fighting until 1980 and was still working as a journalist and maker of documentaries.
Henri Curiel had died in 1978, assassinated by La Main rouge1 at the foot of his elevator in Rue Rollin. I’d heard about it in Algeria, from the newspapers. We were both much saddened by Henri’s death, which put the seal on the end of an era. We’d grown old—we were no longer in the know. The geopolitical conflicts of the ’80s were beyond us; we had no idea what was at stake anymore. I took up my work as a photographer again and applied for naturalization. You have to be able to live in a country where you’ll be free. We became French in 1992. I was sixty-seven, and I was a young father! I watched you all grow up hoping that, even if I hadn’t been able to give you a better world, I could transmit to you the values for which I’ve never ceased to fight. Today I’m sure I have.
1. ‘The Red Hand’, an obscure organization that is assumed to be in reality an offshoot of the French secret service, which they use to get rid of files that are a nuisance by sabotage and assassination. The death of Henri Curiel is generally attributed to the Main rouge or the OAS, though it’s not absolutely certain.
Photographs by Adolfo Kaminsky
SELECTION
Stamps, identity cards and passports forged by Adolfo Kaminsky during the Nazi occupation of France, including his own identity card with fingerprint. The name on this document is “Julien Keller”, lower right.
PHOTO © ADOLFO KAMINSKY
Les enfants Jeux de bille 1955
PHOTO © ADOLFO KAMINSKY
Les puces Mannequins et manège 1955
PHOTO © ADOLFO KAMINSKY
Paris la nuit Amoureux sur un banc 1948
PHOTO © ADOLFO KAMINSKY
Paris la nuit Femme seule qui attend (Martha Marton) 1946
PHOTO © ADOLFO KAMINSKY
Paris la nuit Le banc* 1948
PHOTO © ADOLFO KAMINSKY
Paris la nuit Les Champs Elysées 1952
PHOTO © ADOLFO KAMINSKY
Paris la nuit Vitrines de Pigalle 1952
PHOTO © ADOLFO KAMINSKY
Paris Le bus 1955
PHOTO © ADOLFO KAMINSKY
Paris Le libraire 1948
PHOTO © ADOLFO KAMINSKY
Paris Les enfants 1950
PHOTO © ADOLFO KAMINSKY
Paris Les pavés 1947
PHOTO © ADOLFO KAMINSKY
Paris Petite fille à la poupée rue Broca 1945
PHOTO © ADOLFO KAMINSKY
Paris Tunnel sur la Seine 1953
PHOTO © ADOLFO KAMINSKY
* Adolfo Kaminsky often photographed the same scenes, sometimes quite close to home, in his study of the changing city.
Acknowledgments
For having been kind enough to share their memories with me, I would like to thank Denis Berger, Omar Boudaoud, Marie-Aline Collenot, Hélène Cuenat, maître Roland Dumas, Anita Fernandez, maître Ali Haroun, José Hipolito Dos Santos, Francis Jeanson, Leïla Kaminsky, Marthe Kaminsky, Paul Kaminsky, Marceline Loridan, Yoram Mouchenik, Niko, Sarah-Elisabeth Penn, Belkacem Rhani, Aurélie Ricard, Annette Roger, Suzie Rosenberger, Paul-Louis Thirard and Jean-Pierre Van-Tinguem.
And for reading the manuscript I would like to thank Jean-Étienne Cohen-Séat, Alban Fischer, Nicole Gex, and Leïla Kaminsky.
Biographies
SARAH KAMINSKY is an actress, screenwriter and author born in Algeria. She was three years old when she immigrated to France with her father Adolfo Kaminsky, two brothers and her mother Leïla, a Tuareg Algerian, law student, and anti-colonial activist whose father was a progressive imam. Sarah Kaminsky’s first book is the best-selling biography of her father, published by Éditions Calmann-Lévy in 2009 and now translated into seven languages. She has a son and lives in Paris.
ADOLFO KAMINSKY, of Russian Jewish origins and carrying an Argentinean passport, made his living in Paris as a photographer in various fields: postcards, advertising photos, and photo reportage while, at the same time, working clandestinely as an unpaid forger for humanitarian causes. He photographed numerous works of art for exhibition catalogs and posters, and he was the regular documentarian for French painters who were precursors of kinetic art. As a specialist for giant-format photography Adolfo Kaminsky produced film sets for Alexandre Trauner, the set designer for Marcel Carné, René Clair and others. He also took thousands of artistic photographs throughout his life, but has only recently started exhibiting them. He lives in Paris with his wife, Leïla.
MIKE MITCHELL has been active as a translator for over thirty years. He is the recipient of the Schlegel-Tieck Prize for translations of German works published in Britain, has won the British Comparative Literature Association translation competition twice for works from German along with a commendation for a translation from French, and has been shortlisted for numerous other awards. In 2012 the Austrian Ministry of Education, Art and Culture awarded him a lifetime achievement award as a translator of literary works. He lives in Scotland.
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