My father, the forgerer | Sarah Kaminsky | TEDxParis

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences.

Sarah Kaminsky talks about the life of his father who was a forger during and after World War II.

Hello.

I am the daughter of a forgerer.

Not any forgerer.

When you hear the word "forgerer",
you often understand "mercenary",

you understand "forged currency",
"forged pictures".

My father is no such man.

During 30 years of his life,
he made forged documents.

Never for himself,
always for other people.

And to come to the aid
of the persecuted and the oppressed.

Let me introduce him.

Here is my father at the age of 19.

It all began for him during World War II,

when aged 17 he was catapulted
into a forged documents workshop.

He quickly became the forged
documents expert of the Resistance.

And it is no banal story,

for after the liberation, he continued
to make forged documents until the '70s.

And when I was a child
I knew nothing about this, of course.

This is me, in the middle,
the one who's pulling faces.

I grew up in the Paris suburbs
and I was the youngest of three children.

And I had a "normal" dad,
well, like everybody else,

apart from he fact
that he was 30 years older than...

well, he was basically, old enough
to be my grandfather.

Anyway, he was a photographer
and a street educator,

and he always taught us
to obey the law very strictly.

And, of course, he never talked about
his past life when he was a forgerer.

There was, however, an incident
I'm going to tell you about,

that perhaps could have made me
suspect something.

I was at high school and got
a bad mark, a rare event for me,

anyway, I decided to hide it
from my parents.

In order to do that, I set out
to forge their signature.

I started working
on my mother's signature,

for my father's is
absolutely impossible to forge.

So, I got working:
I took some sheets of paper

and started training,
and training and training,

until I reached what I thought
was a good hand,

and went into action.

Later, while checking my satchel,

my mother got hold
of my school assignment

and immediately saw
that the signature was forged.

She told me off like she never had,

I went hiding into my bedroom,
hiding under the blankets,

and then I waited for my father
to come back from work.

In a very apprehensive state
I heard him come in,

I remained under the blankets;
he entered my room,

sat on the corner of the bed,

and he was silent, so I pulled
the blanket from my head,

and when he saw me he started laughing,

he was laughing so hard,
he could not stop,

and he was holding
my assignment in his hand,

and then he said, "But really, Sarah,

you could have worked harder,
can't you see it's really too small?"

Indeed, it's rather small.

I was born in Algeria.

There I would hear people say
my father was a "moudjahid";

it means "fighter".

And later on, in France, I loved
eavesdropping on grown ups' conversations,

and I would hear all sort of stories
on the previous life of my father,

and especially that he had "done"
the Second World War

that he had "done" the Algerian war.

And in my head I would be thinking
that "doing" a war meant being a soldier.

And knowing my father,
and that he would always be saying

that he was a pacifist and non-violent,

I found it very hard to picture him
with a helmet and a gun.

And indeed, I was very far from the mark.

One day, while my father
was working on a file

for us to obtain French nationality,

I happened to see some documents
that caught my attention.

These are real ones!
These are mine, I was born an Argentinian.

But the documents I happened to see

and that would help make
a case for the authorities

was a document from the army

that thanked my father for his work
on behalf of the secret services.

And then, suddenly, I went "wow"!
Mm... My father a secret agent?

It was very James Bond, really...

And I was pushed to ask him questions,
to which he did not answer.

And later, I told myself that after all
one day I would have to question him.

And then, time went by
and I did not ask any question.

And I became a mother and had a son

and finally decided the time was ripe,
he absolutely had to talk to us.

Now, I had become a mother,
and he was celebrating his 77th birthday

and suddenly I was very, very afraid.

I feared he'd go
and take his silences with him,

and take his secrets with him.

And I managed to convince him
that it was important for us

but possibly also for other people,
that he shared his story.

He resolved to tell it to me
and I made a book,

of which I'm going to read
some excerpts to you later.

Well now, his story.
My father was born in Argentina.

His parents were of Russian descent.

And the whole family came
to settle in France in the '30s.

His parents were Jewish,
Russian, and mainly very poor.

So at the age of 14,
my father had to work.

And with his only diploma,
and his primary education certificate,

he found himself working
at a dyer - dry cleaner.

And there is where he discovered
something wholly magic for him,

and when he talks about,
it it's fascinating;

that's the magic of dyeing chemistry.

In those times there was the war

and his mother was assassinated
when he was 15.

And this coincided with the time

when he threw himself
body and soul into chemistry,

for it was the only consolation
for his sadness.

All day he would ask plenty
of questions to his boss

to learn, to accumulate
more and more knowledge,

and at night, when no one was looking,
he'd put his experience to the test,

and he was mostly interested
in ink bleaching.

All this to tell you that if my father
became a forgerer, actually,

it was almost by chance.

They were Jewish, and hounded.

Finally the whole family was arrested
and taken to the Drancy camp

and they manged to get out in extremis
thanks to their Argentinian papers.

But, they were out,
but they were always in danger.

The big "Jew" stamp
was still on their papers.

It was his father who decided
they needed false documents.

And my father had been instilled
with such respect of the law

that although he was being persecuted,
he'd never thought of false papers.

He was the one who went
to meet the men of the Resistance.

In those times documents had
hard covers, they were filled in by hand,

and they stated your job.

In order to survive,
he needed to be working.

He asked that man to put "dyer".

And suddenly the man
looked very, very interested.

How comes "dyer", do you know
how to bleach ink marks?

Of course he knew.

And suddenly, the man starts explaining

how, actually, the whole Resistance
has an enormous problem:

for even the top experts cannot manage
to bleach an ink, called "indelible",

Watermann blue ink.

And my father immediately replies
that he knows exactly how to bleach it.

Now, of course, the man was
most impressed with this young man of 17

who can immediately give
the formula, so he recruits him.

And actually, without knowing it,
my father had invented something

we can find in every
schoolchild's pencil case,

the so called "correction pen".

(Applause)

But it was only the beginning.

Actually,

- that's my father, always -

as soon as he got to the workshop,
and though he was the youngest,

he immediately saw there was a problem
with the making of forged documents.

All the movements stopped at forging.

Only the demand was ever growing

and it was difficult
to temper existing documents.

He told himself
it was necessary to make them.

He started the press.
He started photo-engraving.

He started making rubber stamps
he started inventing all kind of things,

with some stuff he invented
a centrifuge with a bicycle wheel.

Anyway, he had to do all this

for he was completely
obsessed with output.

He had made a simple calculation:

in 1 hour he could make
30 forged documents.

If he slept 1 hour, 30 people would die.

So much so that this
sense of responsibility

for other people's lives
when he was just 17,

and also his guilt for being a survivor,

since he had escaped the camp
when his friends had not,

is still with him.

And this is maybe what explains
that, for 30 years,

he continued to make forged documents

in spite of all sacrifices.

I would like to mention the sacrifices

because they were quite a few.

There have obviously been
economic sacrifices:

because he has always refused to be paid.

because for him getting paid
meant to be a mercenary.

Because if he accepted to be paid

he could no longer say,
"yes" or "no"

depending on whether the cause seemed
the right one or not.

So he was a photographer during the day,
and a forger at night for 30 years

and broke all the time.

And then there were the
emotional sacrifices:

how to live with a woman
while having so many secrets?

How to explain what he was going to do
in the laboratory,

every night?

Obviously, there has been
another type of sacrifice,

the family, and I understood that later.

One day my father
introduced me to my sister,

and besides, he also explained
to me that I had a brother too.

And the first time I saw them,
I was about 3-4 years,

they were 30 years older than I was.

Today, they are both in their 60s.

Because I was writing a book
I also interviewed my sister,

and I wanted to know who my father was,
who was the father she had known?

She explained to me
that father that she had

was someone who would come
to pick them for a Sunday walk.

they were all nicely dressed
and ready, they were waiting,

and that he almost never came.

That he would say, "I'll call you."
But that he never did.

And then he did not come.

And then one day,
he just disappeared.

And then time passed,

and they thought
that he had surely forgotten them,

all together.

And then, as time passed,
after almost two years, they thought:

"It’s possible that our father is dead."

And actually I understood

that I have so many questions
for my father

but that removing all this past
that he might not want to talk about

could be painful.

While my half-sister and my half-brother
believed themselves abandoned,

or maybe orphans,

my father was making false documents.

And if he did not tell them anything,
it was to protect them, the course.

After liberation, he forged papers

to allow the survivors
of the concentration camps

to immigrate to Palestine,
before the creation of Israel.

And then, as he was a staunch
anti-colonialist,

he forged papers for Algerians
during the Algerian war.

And then, after the war in Algeria,

within the International
Movement for Resistance

his name was circulating.

And the whole world has come
knocking at his door.

In Africa, there were countries
who fought for their independence.

Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Angola.

And my father had links
to Nelson Mandela's anti-apartheid party.

He made false papers
for the persecuted black South African.

There was also Latin America.

My father helped
resistance movements against dictatorships

in Santo Domingo, Haiti,

and then in Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela,

Salvador, Nicaragua,
Colombia, Peru,

Uruguay, Chile and Mexico.

And then there was the Vietnam War.

My father made false papers
for American deserters

who did not want to raise in arms
against the Vietnamese.

And Europe was not spared either.

My father made false papers for those
dissidents against Franco, in Spain,

against Salazar in Portugal,

against the dictatorship
of the colonels in Greece.

And even in France;

Only once and it was in May of '68.

My father watched
with good will, of course,

the demonstrations that took place in May,

but his heart was elsewhere,
and so was its time,

since he was to serve
more than 15 countries.

Once, however, he agreed
to make false papers

for someone you go
perhaps recognize.

(Laughter)

He was much younger then.

and my father accepted to forge his papers

to enable him to return
and speak at a meeting.

And he told me
that these forged papers there,

were the most famous ones in the media

but the least useful ones
that he forged in his entire life.

but he agreed to do so

although the life of Daniel Cohn-Bendit
was not in danger,

but because it was a great opportunity

to mock the authorities

and show them that there was nothing
more porous than borders

and that they had no idea about it.

All my childhood,

while the other dads told
Grimm stories to my friends,

my father told me
very discreet hero stories,

full of unshakeable utopias

where even wonders took place.

And those heroes did not need
an army behind them,

and in fact, not everyone would follow

except a handful of men and women
full of conviction and courage.

And I understood later on

that the story he was telling be before
I went to bed was his own story.

I asked him if, in the light
of the sacrifices he had to make,

he has ever had any regrets.

He said no.

He said that anyway
he would have been unable

to witness, or to watch injustice
happening without doing anything.

He was persuaded and he's still convinced

that another world is possible,

a world where nobody
would ever need a forger.

He's still dreaming about it.

My father is here today in this room.

His name is Adolfo Kaminsky,
and I will ask him to stand up.

(Applause)

Thank you.

(Applause)

Thank you.

(Applause)

Sit down, sit down, please take a seat.

(Applause)

(Standing ovations)