WEBVTT 00:00:01.000 --> 00:00:03.916 I am the daughter of a forger, 00:00:03.916 --> 00:00:05.861 not just any forger ... 00:00:05.861 --> 00:00:08.778 When you hear the word "forger," you often understand "mercenary." 00:00:08.778 --> 00:00:12.300 You understand "forged currency," "forged pictures." 00:00:12.300 --> 00:00:14.612 My father is no such man. 00:00:14.612 --> 00:00:15.800 For 30 years of his life, 00:00:15.800 --> 00:00:18.502 he made false papers -- 00:00:18.502 --> 00:00:20.447 never for himself, always for other people, 00:00:20.447 --> 00:00:24.336 and to come to the aid of the persecuted and the oppressed. 00:00:24.336 --> 00:00:26.500 Let me introduce him. 00:00:26.500 --> 00:00:29.500 Here is my father at age 19. 00:00:29.500 --> 00:00:33.500 It all began for him during World War II, 00:00:33.500 --> 00:00:35.500 when at age 17 he found himself thrust 00:00:35.500 --> 00:00:37.200 into a forged documents workshop. 00:00:37.200 --> 00:00:41.700 He quickly became the false papers expert of the Resistance. 00:00:41.700 --> 00:00:43.500 And it's not a banal story -- 00:00:43.500 --> 00:00:46.500 after the liberation he continued 00:00:46.500 --> 00:00:49.600 to make false papers until the '70s. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:49.600 --> 00:00:51.250 When I was a child 00:00:51.250 --> 00:00:53.398 I knew nothing about this, of course. 00:00:53.398 --> 00:00:55.900 This is me in the middle making faces. 00:00:55.900 --> 00:00:58.232 I grew up in the Paris suburbs 00:00:58.232 --> 00:01:02.121 and I was the youngest of three children. 00:01:02.121 --> 00:01:05.011 I had a "normal" dad like everybody else, 00:01:05.011 --> 00:01:06.956 apart from the fact that he was 30 years older than ... 00:01:06.956 --> 00:01:10.845 well, he was basically old enough to be my grandfather. 00:01:10.845 --> 00:01:13.800 Anyway, he was a photographer and a street educator, 00:01:13.800 --> 00:01:17.400 and he always taught us to obey the law very strictly. 00:01:17.400 --> 00:01:19.700 And, of course, he never talked about his past life 00:01:19.700 --> 00:01:21.900 when he was a forger. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:21.900 --> 00:01:24.459 There was, however, an incident I'm going to tell you about, 00:01:24.459 --> 00:01:27.376 that perhaps could have led me suspect something. 00:01:27.376 --> 00:01:30.293 I was in high school and got a bad grade, 00:01:30.293 --> 00:01:32.238 a rare event for me, 00:01:32.238 --> 00:01:35.183 so I decided to hide it from my parents. 00:01:35.183 --> 00:01:39.072 In order to do that, I set out to forge their signature. 00:01:39.072 --> 00:01:42.200 I started working on my mother's signature, 00:01:42.200 --> 00:01:44.907 because my father's is absolutely impossible to forge. 00:01:44.907 --> 00:01:47.824 So, I got working. I took some sheets of paper 00:01:47.824 --> 00:01:50.741 and started practicing, practicing, practicing, 00:01:50.742 --> 00:01:52.686 until I reached what I thought was a steady hand, 00:01:52.686 --> 00:01:54.630 and went into action. 00:01:54.631 --> 00:01:57.000 Later, while checking my school bag, 00:01:57.000 --> 00:02:00.492 my mother got hold of my school assignment and immediately saw that the signature was forged. 00:02:00.492 --> 00:02:02.437 She yelled at me like she never had before. 00:02:02.437 --> 00:02:05.354 I went to hide in my bedroom, under the blankets, 00:02:05.354 --> 00:02:08.299 and then I waited for my father to come back from work 00:02:08.299 --> 00:02:10.189 with, one could say, much apprehension. 00:02:10.189 --> 00:02:12.161 I heard him come in. 00:02:12.161 --> 00:02:16.078 I remained under the blankets. He entered my room, 00:02:16.078 --> 00:02:18.023 sat on the corner of the bed, 00:02:18.023 --> 00:02:20.913 and he was silent, so I pulled the blanket from my head, 00:02:20.913 --> 00:02:23.830 and when he saw me he started laughing. 00:02:23.830 --> 00:02:26.747 He was laughing so hard, he could not stop and he was holding my assignment in his hand. 00:02:26.747 --> 00:02:31.100 Then he said, "But really, Sarah, you could have worked harder! Can't you see it's really too small?" 00:02:31.100 --> 00:02:37.000 Indeed, it's rather small. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:37.000 --> 00:02:39.000 I was born in Algeria. 00:02:39.000 --> 00:02:42.305 There I would hear people say my father was a "moudjahid" 00:02:42.305 --> 00:02:43.500 and that means "fighter." 00:02:43.500 --> 00:02:48.084 Later on, in France, I loved eavesdropping on grownups' conversations, 00:02:48.084 --> 00:02:51.001 and I would hear all sorts of stories about my father's previous life, 00:02:51.001 --> 00:02:53.919 especially that he had "done" World War II, 00:02:53.919 --> 00:02:55.863 that he had "done" the Algerian war. 00:02:55.863 --> 00:02:58.781 And in my head I would be thinking that "doing" a war meant being a soldier. 00:02:58.781 --> 00:03:02.698 But knowing my father, and how he kept saying that he was a pacifist and non-violent, 00:03:02.698 --> 00:03:06.000 I found it very hard to picture him with a helmet and gun. 00:03:06.000 --> 00:03:08.000 And indeed, I was very far from the mark. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:08.000 --> 00:03:11.200 One day, while my father was working on a file 00:03:11.200 --> 00:03:14.366 for us to obtain French nationality, 00:03:14.366 --> 00:03:16.311 I happened to see some documents 00:03:16.311 --> 00:03:18.728 that caught my attention. 00:03:18.728 --> 00:03:20.400 These are real! 00:03:20.400 --> 00:03:23.118 These are mine, I was born an Argentinean. 00:03:23.118 --> 00:03:24.900 But the document I happened to see 00:03:24.900 --> 00:03:27.007 that would help us build a case for the authorities 00:03:27.007 --> 00:03:29.700 was a document from the army 00:03:29.700 --> 00:03:32.869 that thanked my father for his work 00:03:32.869 --> 00:03:34.788 on behalf of the secret services. 00:03:34.788 --> 00:03:37.705 And then, suddenly, I went "wow!" 00:03:37.705 --> 00:03:39.400 My father, a secret agent? 00:03:39.400 --> 00:03:41.566 It was very James Bond. 00:03:41.566 --> 00:03:46.455 I wanted to ask him questions, which he didn't answer. 00:03:46.455 --> 00:03:49.400 And later, I told myself that 00:03:49.400 --> 00:03:52.000 one day I would have to question him. 00:03:52.000 --> 00:03:54.151 And then I became a mother and had a son, 00:03:54.151 --> 00:03:57.300 and finally decided it was time -- that he absolutely had to talk to us. 00:03:57.300 --> 00:03:59.300 I had become a mother 00:03:59.300 --> 00:04:01.300 and he was celebrating his 77th birthday, 00:04:01.300 --> 00:04:03.600 and suddenly I was very, very afraid. 00:04:03.600 --> 00:04:05.848 I feared he'd go 00:04:05.848 --> 00:04:07.793 and take his silences with him, 00:04:07.793 --> 00:04:09.737 and take his secrets with him. 00:04:09.737 --> 00:04:12.100 I managed to convince him that it was important for us, 00:04:12.100 --> 00:04:13.627 but possibly also for other people 00:04:13.627 --> 00:04:15.572 that he shared his story. 00:04:15.572 --> 00:04:17.516 He decided to tell it to me 00:04:17.516 --> 00:04:18.800 and I made a book, 00:04:18.800 --> 00:04:21.406 from which I'm going to read you some excerpts later. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:21.406 --> 00:04:24.323 So, his story. My father was born in Argentina. 00:04:24.323 --> 00:04:26.268 His parents were of Russian descent. 00:04:26.268 --> 00:04:30.185 The whole family came to settle in France in the '30s. 00:04:30.186 --> 00:04:35.000 His parents were Jewish, Russian and above all, very poor. 00:04:35.000 --> 00:04:38.000 So at the age of 14 my father had to work. 00:04:38.000 --> 00:04:39.200 And with his only diploma, 00:04:39.200 --> 00:04:40.500 his primary education certificate, 00:04:40.500 --> 00:04:43.000 he found himself working at a dyer - dry cleaner. 00:04:43.000 --> 00:04:46.200 That's where he discovered something totally magical, 00:04:46.200 --> 00:04:48.000 and when he talks about it, it's fascinating -- 00:04:48.000 --> 00:04:50.800 it's the magic of dyeing chemistry. 00:04:50.800 --> 00:04:52.600 During that time the war was happening 00:04:52.600 --> 00:04:55.467 and his mother was killed when he was 15. 00:04:55.468 --> 00:04:58.000 This coincided with the time when 00:04:58.000 --> 00:05:00.000 he threw himself body and soul into chemistry 00:05:00.000 --> 00:05:02.700 because it was the only consolation for his sadness. 00:05:02.700 --> 00:05:06.163 All day he would ask many questions to his boss 00:05:06.164 --> 00:05:09.000 to learn, to accumulate more and more knowledge, 00:05:09.000 --> 00:05:10.500 and at night, when no one was looking, 00:05:10.500 --> 00:05:12.700 he'd put his experience to practice. 00:05:12.700 --> 00:05:17.800 He was mostly interested in ink bleaching. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:17.800 --> 00:05:20.000 All this to tell you 00:05:20.000 --> 00:05:22.500 that if my father became a forger, actually, 00:05:22.500 --> 00:05:24.500 it was almost by accident. 00:05:24.500 --> 00:05:27.000 His family was Jewish, so they were hounded. 00:05:27.000 --> 00:05:30.000 Finally they were all arrested and taken to the Drancy camp 00:05:30.000 --> 00:05:33.200 and they managed to get out at the last minute thanks to their Argentinean papers. 00:05:33.200 --> 00:05:34.335 Well, they were out, 00:05:34.336 --> 00:05:37.252 but they were always in danger. The big "Jew" stamp was still on their papers. 00:05:37.253 --> 00:05:40.500 It was my grandfather who decided they needed false documents. 00:05:40.500 --> 00:05:44.000 My father had been instilled with such respect for the law 00:05:44.000 --> 00:05:46.000 that although he was being persecuted, 00:05:46.000 --> 00:05:48.000 he'd never thought of false papers. 00:05:48.000 --> 00:05:51.000 But it was he who went to meet a man from the Resistance. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:51.000 --> 00:05:53.500 In those times documents had hard covers, 00:05:53.500 --> 00:05:55.000 they were filled in by hand, 00:05:55.000 --> 00:05:58.000 and they stated your job. 00:05:58.000 --> 00:06:00.200 In order to survive, he needed 00:06:00.200 --> 00:06:02.200 to be working. He asked the man 00:06:02.200 --> 00:06:04.000 to write "dyer." 00:06:04.000 --> 00:06:07.000 Suddenly the man looked very, very interested. 00:06:07.000 --> 00:06:10.200 As a "dyer," do you know how to bleach ink marks? 00:06:10.200 --> 00:06:12.500 Of course he knew. 00:06:12.500 --> 00:06:14.300 And suddenly the man started explaining that 00:06:14.300 --> 00:06:17.000 actually the whole Resistance had a huge problem: 00:06:17.000 --> 00:06:19.600 even the top experts 00:06:19.600 --> 00:06:23.200 could not manage to bleach an ink, called "indelible," 00:06:23.200 --> 00:06:25.400 the "Waterman" blue ink. 00:06:25.400 --> 00:06:29.300 And my father immediately replied that he knew exactly 00:06:29.300 --> 00:06:30.500 how to bleach it. 00:06:30.500 --> 00:06:33.700 Now, of course, the man was very impressed with this young man of 17 00:06:33.700 --> 00:06:37.500 who could immediately give him the formula, so he recruited him. 00:06:37.500 --> 00:06:40.500 And actually, without knowing it, my father had invented something 00:06:40.500 --> 00:06:43.150 we can find in every schoolchild's pencil case: 00:06:43.150 --> 00:06:46.000 the so-called "correction pen." 00:06:46.500 --> 00:06:51.500 (Applause) NOTE Paragraph 00:06:52.000 --> 00:06:53.400 But it was only the beginning. 00:06:53.400 --> 00:06:55.000 That's my father. 00:06:55.000 --> 00:06:56.500 As soon as he got to the lab, 00:06:56.500 --> 00:06:57.900 even though he was the youngest, 00:06:57.900 --> 00:07:00.800 he immediately saw that there was a problem with the making of forged documents. 00:07:00.800 --> 00:07:03.700 All the movements stopped at falsifying. 00:07:03.700 --> 00:07:06.300 But demand was ever-growing 00:07:06.300 --> 00:07:08.900 and it was difficult to tamper with existing documents. 00:07:08.900 --> 00:07:10.400 He told himself it was necessary to make them from scratch. 00:07:10.400 --> 00:07:13.200 He started a press. He started photoengraving. 00:07:13.200 --> 00:07:14.800 He started making rubber stamps. 00:07:14.800 --> 00:07:16.600 He started inventing all kind of things -- 00:07:16.600 --> 00:07:20.000 with some materials he invented a centrifuge using a bicycle wheel. 00:07:20.000 --> 00:07:22.000 Anyway, he had to do all this 00:07:22.000 --> 00:07:24.800 because he was completely obsessed with output. 00:07:24.800 --> 00:07:27.000 He had made a simple calculation: 00:07:27.000 --> 00:07:30.100 In one hour he could make 30 forged documents. 00:07:30.100 --> 00:07:34.500 If he slept one hour, 30 people would die. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:34.500 --> 00:07:37.500 This sense of 00:07:37.500 --> 00:07:40.700 responsibility for other people's lives when he was just 17 -- 00:07:40.700 --> 00:07:43.700 and also his guilt for being a survivor, 00:07:43.700 --> 00:07:47.300 since he had escaped the camp when his friends had not -- 00:07:47.300 --> 00:07:49.552 stayed with him all his life. 00:07:49.553 --> 00:07:52.470 And this is maybe what explains why, for 30 years, 00:07:52.471 --> 00:07:55.100 he continued to make false papers 00:07:55.100 --> 00:07:57.400 at the expense of all kinds of sacrifices. 00:07:57.400 --> 00:07:58.300 I'd like to talk about those sacrifices, 00:07:58.300 --> 00:08:00.200 because there were many. 00:08:00.200 --> 00:08:02.700 There were obviously financial sacrifices 00:08:02.700 --> 00:08:04.500 because he always refused to be paid. 00:08:04.500 --> 00:08:07.200 To him, being paid would have meant being a mercenary. 00:08:07.200 --> 00:08:08.800 If he had accepted payment, 00:08:08.800 --> 00:08:10.600 he wouldn't be able to say "yes" or "no" 00:08:10.600 --> 00:08:13.000 depending on what he deemed a just or unjust cause. 00:08:13.000 --> 00:08:14.900 So he was a photographer by day, 00:08:14.900 --> 00:08:16.500 and a forger by night for 30 years. 00:08:16.500 --> 00:08:18.500 He was broke all of the time. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:18.500 --> 00:08:21.500 Then there were the emotional sacrifices: 00:08:21.500 --> 00:08:24.500 How can one live with a woman while having so many secrets? 00:08:24.500 --> 00:08:28.700 How can one explain what one does at night in the lab, every single night? 00:08:28.700 --> 00:08:32.000 Of course, there was another kind of sacrifice 00:08:32.000 --> 00:08:35.400 involving his family that I understood much later. 00:08:35.400 --> 00:08:38.500 One day my father introduced me to my sister. 00:08:38.500 --> 00:08:42.500 He also explained to me that I had a brother, too, 00:08:42.500 --> 00:08:48.500 and the first time I saw them I must have been three or four, 00:08:48.500 --> 00:08:50.300 and they were 30 years older than me. 00:08:50.300 --> 00:08:55.800 They are both in their sixties now. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:55.800 --> 00:08:58.500 In order to write the book, 00:08:58.500 --> 00:09:02.000 I asked my sister questions. I wanted to know who my father was, 00:09:02.000 --> 00:09:03.500 who was the father she had known. 00:09:03.500 --> 00:09:07.600 She explained that the father that she'd had 00:09:07.600 --> 00:09:11.800 would tell them he'd come and pick them up on Sunday to go for a walk. 00:09:11.800 --> 00:09:14.400 They would get all dressed up and wait for him, 00:09:14.400 --> 00:09:16.200 but he would almost never come. 00:09:16.200 --> 00:09:19.500 He'd say, "I'll call." He wouldn't call. 00:09:19.500 --> 00:09:21.500 And then he would not come. 00:09:21.500 --> 00:09:24.800 Then one day he totally disappeared. 00:09:24.800 --> 00:09:26.200 Time passed, 00:09:26.200 --> 00:09:29.400 and they thought he had surely forgotten them, 00:09:29.400 --> 00:09:31.000 at first. 00:09:31.000 --> 00:09:32.500 Then as time passed, 00:09:32.500 --> 00:09:34.500 at the end of almost two years, they thought, 00:09:34.500 --> 00:09:37.700 "Well, perhaps our father has died." 00:09:37.700 --> 00:09:40.000 And then I understood 00:09:40.000 --> 00:09:42.900 that asking my father so many questions 00:09:42.900 --> 00:09:45.700 was stirring up a whole past he probably didn't feel like talking about 00:09:45.700 --> 00:09:47.300 because it was painful. 00:09:47.300 --> 00:09:52.000 And while my half brother and sister thought they'd been abandoned, 00:09:52.000 --> 00:09:53.700 orphaned, 00:09:53.700 --> 00:09:56.000 my father was making false papers. 00:09:56.000 --> 00:09:59.500 And if he did not tell them, it was of course to protect them. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:59.500 --> 00:10:01.300 After the liberation he made false papers 00:10:01.300 --> 00:10:04.200 to allow the survivors of concentration camps to immigrate to Palestine 00:10:04.200 --> 00:10:06.100 before the creation of Israel. 00:10:06.100 --> 00:10:08.500 And then, as he was a staunch anti-colonialist, 00:10:08.500 --> 00:10:12.000 he made false papers for Algerians during the Algerian war. 00:10:12.000 --> 00:10:14.600 After the Algerian war, 00:10:14.600 --> 00:10:17.200 at the heart of the international resistance movements, 00:10:17.200 --> 00:10:18.900 his name circulated 00:10:18.900 --> 00:10:21.200 and the whole world came knocking at his door. 00:10:21.200 --> 00:10:24.700 In Africa there were countries fighting for their independence: 00:10:24.700 --> 00:10:27.700 Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Angola. 00:10:27.700 --> 00:10:32.200 And then my father connected with Nelson Mandela's anti-apartheid party. 00:10:32.200 --> 00:10:35.700 He made false papers for persecuted black South Africans. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:35.700 --> 00:10:37.500 There was also Latin America. 00:10:37.500 --> 00:10:40.200 My father helped those who resisted dictatorships 00:10:40.200 --> 00:10:42.100 in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, 00:10:42.100 --> 00:10:48.200 and then it was the turn of Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, El Salvador, Nicaragua, 00:10:48.200 --> 00:10:53.800 Colombia, Peru, Uruguay, Chile and Mexico. 00:10:53.800 --> 00:10:55.500 Then there was the Vietnam War. 00:10:55.500 --> 00:10:57.800 My father made false papers for the American deserters 00:10:57.800 --> 00:11:01.000 who did not wish to take up arms against the Vietnamese. 00:11:01.000 --> 00:11:03.000 Europe was not spared either. 00:11:03.000 --> 00:11:05.141 My father made false papers for the dissidents 00:11:05.142 --> 00:11:08.900 against Franco in Spain, Salazar in Portugal, 00:11:08.900 --> 00:11:13.892 against the colonels' dictatorship in Greece, 00:11:13.893 --> 00:11:15.600 and even in France. 00:11:15.600 --> 00:11:18.754 There, just once, it happened in May of 1968. 00:11:18.755 --> 00:11:21.400 My father watched, benevolently, of course, 00:11:21.400 --> 00:11:24.200 the demonstrations of the month of May, 00:11:24.200 --> 00:11:26.500 but his heart was elsewhere, and so was his time 00:11:26.500 --> 00:11:30.000 because he had over 15 countries to serve. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:30.000 --> 00:11:32.368 Once, though, he agreed to make false papers 00:11:32.369 --> 00:11:34.312 for someone you might recognize. 00:11:34.313 --> 00:11:37.229 (Laughter) 00:11:37.230 --> 00:11:38.850 He was much younger in those days, 00:11:38.850 --> 00:11:41.000 and my father agreed to make false papers 00:11:41.000 --> 00:11:44.036 to enable him to come back and speak at a meeting. 00:11:44.037 --> 00:11:49.000 He told me that those false papers were the most media-relevant 00:11:49.000 --> 00:11:52.500 and the least useful he'd had to make in all his life. 00:11:52.500 --> 00:11:54.000 But, he agreed to do it, 00:11:54.000 --> 00:11:57.400 even though Daniel Cohn-Bendit's life was not in danger, 00:11:57.400 --> 00:11:59.594 just because 00:11:59.595 --> 00:12:01.000 it was a good opportunity 00:12:01.000 --> 00:12:03.484 to mock the authorities, 00:12:03.485 --> 00:12:06.500 and to show them that there's nothing more porous than borders -- 00:12:06.500 --> 00:12:11.000 and that ideas have no borders. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:11.000 --> 00:12:13.000 All my childhood, 00:12:13.000 --> 00:12:17.097 while my friends' dads would tell them Grimm's fairy tales, 00:12:17.098 --> 00:12:20.987 my father would tell me stories about very unassuming heroes 00:12:20.988 --> 00:12:23.904 with unshakeable utopias 00:12:23.905 --> 00:12:26.821 who managed to make miracles. 00:12:26.822 --> 00:12:30.800 And those heroes did not need an army behind them. 00:12:30.800 --> 00:12:33.300 Anyhow, nobody would have followed them, 00:12:33.300 --> 00:12:36.545 except for a handful [of] men and women of conviction and courage. 00:12:36.546 --> 00:12:37.800 I understood much later 00:12:37.800 --> 00:12:41.407 that actually it was his own story my father would tell me to get me to sleep. 00:12:41.408 --> 00:12:44.324 I asked him whether, considering the sacrifices he had to make, 00:12:44.325 --> 00:12:46.269 he ever had any regrets. 00:12:46.270 --> 00:12:48.000 He said no. 00:12:48.000 --> 00:12:50.159 He told me that he would have been unable 00:12:50.160 --> 00:12:53.076 to witness or submit to injustice without doing anything. 00:12:53.077 --> 00:12:56.100 He was persuaded, and he's still convinced 00:12:56.100 --> 00:12:58.300 that another world is possible -- 00:12:58.300 --> 00:13:01.300 a world where no one would ever need a forger. 00:13:01.300 --> 00:13:03.300 He's still dreaming about it. 00:13:03.300 --> 00:13:04.744 My father 00:13:04.745 --> 00:13:06.500 is here in the room today. 00:13:06.500 --> 00:13:10.579 His name is Adolfo Kaminsky and I'm going to ask him to stand up. 00:13:10.580 --> 00:13:30.999 (Applause) 00:13:31.000 --> 00:13:34.000 Thank you.