My father the forger
-
0:01 - 0:04I am the daughter of a forger,
-
0:04 - 0:06not just any forger ...
-
0:06 - 0:09When you hear the word "forger," you often understand "mercenary."
-
0:09 - 0:12You understand "forged currency," "forged pictures."
-
0:12 - 0:15My father is no such man.
-
0:15 - 0:16For 30 years of his life,
-
0:16 - 0:19he made false papers --
-
0:19 - 0:20never for himself, always for other people,
-
0:20 - 0:24and to come to the aid of the persecuted and the oppressed.
-
0:24 - 0:26Let me introduce him.
-
0:26 - 0:30Here is my father at age 19.
-
0:30 - 0:34It all began for him during World War II,
-
0:34 - 0:36when at age 17 he found himself thrust
-
0:36 - 0:37into a forged documents workshop.
-
0:37 - 0:42He quickly became the false papers expert of the Resistance.
-
0:42 - 0:44And it's not a banal story --
-
0:44 - 0:46after the liberation he continued
-
0:46 - 0:50to make false papers until the '70s.
-
0:50 - 0:51When I was a child
-
0:51 - 0:53I knew nothing about this, of course.
-
0:53 - 0:56This is me in the middle making faces.
-
0:56 - 0:58I grew up in the Paris suburbs
-
0:58 - 1:02and I was the youngest of three children.
-
1:02 - 1:05I had a "normal" dad like everybody else,
-
1:05 - 1:07apart from the fact that he was 30 years older than ...
-
1:07 - 1:11well, he was basically old enough to be my grandfather.
-
1:11 - 1:14Anyway, he was a photographer and a street educator,
-
1:14 - 1:17and he always taught us to obey the law very strictly.
-
1:17 - 1:20And, of course, he never talked about his past life
-
1:20 - 1:22when he was a forger.
-
1:22 - 1:24There was, however, an incident I'm going to tell you about,
-
1:24 - 1:27that perhaps could have led me suspect something.
-
1:27 - 1:30I was in high school and got a bad grade,
-
1:30 - 1:32a rare event for me,
-
1:32 - 1:35so I decided to hide it from my parents.
-
1:35 - 1:39In order to do that, I set out to forge their signature.
-
1:39 - 1:42I started working on my mother's signature,
-
1:42 - 1:45because my father's is absolutely impossible to forge.
-
1:45 - 1:48So, I got working. I took some sheets of paper
-
1:48 - 1:51and started practicing, practicing, practicing,
-
1:51 - 1:53until I reached what I thought was a steady hand,
-
1:53 - 1:55and went into action.
-
1:55 - 1:57Later, while checking my school bag,
-
1:57 - 2:00my mother got hold of my school assignment and immediately saw that the signature was forged.
-
2:00 - 2:02She yelled at me like she never had before.
-
2:02 - 2:05I went to hide in my bedroom, under the blankets,
-
2:05 - 2:08and then I waited for my father to come back from work
-
2:08 - 2:10with, one could say, much apprehension.
-
2:10 - 2:12I heard him come in.
-
2:12 - 2:16I remained under the blankets. He entered my room,
-
2:16 - 2:18sat on the corner of the bed,
-
2:18 - 2:21and he was silent, so I pulled the blanket from my head,
-
2:21 - 2:24and when he saw me he started laughing.
-
2:24 - 2:27He was laughing so hard, he could not stop and he was holding my assignment in his hand.
-
2:27 - 2:31Then he said, "But really, Sarah, you could have worked harder! Can't you see it's really too small?"
-
2:31 - 2:37Indeed, it's rather small.
-
2:37 - 2:39I was born in Algeria.
-
2:39 - 2:42There I would hear people say my father was a "moudjahid"
-
2:42 - 2:44and that means "fighter."
-
2:44 - 2:48Later on, in France, I loved eavesdropping on grownups' conversations,
-
2:48 - 2:51and I would hear all sorts of stories about my father's previous life,
-
2:51 - 2:54especially that he had "done" World War II,
-
2:54 - 2:56that he had "done" the Algerian war.
-
2:56 - 2:59And in my head I would be thinking that "doing" a war meant being a soldier.
-
2:59 - 3:03But knowing my father, and how he kept saying that he was a pacifist and non-violent,
-
3:03 - 3:06I found it very hard to picture him with a helmet and gun.
-
3:06 - 3:08And indeed, I was very far from the mark.
-
3:08 - 3:11One day, while my father was working on a file
-
3:11 - 3:14for us to obtain French nationality,
-
3:14 - 3:16I happened to see some documents
-
3:16 - 3:19that caught my attention.
-
3:19 - 3:20These are real!
-
3:20 - 3:23These are mine, I was born an Argentinean.
-
3:23 - 3:25But the document I happened to see
-
3:25 - 3:27that would help us build a case for the authorities
-
3:27 - 3:30was a document from the army
-
3:30 - 3:33that thanked my father for his work
-
3:33 - 3:35on behalf of the secret services.
-
3:35 - 3:38And then, suddenly, I went "wow!"
-
3:38 - 3:39My father, a secret agent?
-
3:39 - 3:42It was very James Bond.
-
3:42 - 3:46I wanted to ask him questions, which he didn't answer.
-
3:46 - 3:49And later, I told myself that
-
3:49 - 3:52one day I would have to question him.
-
3:52 - 3:54And then I became a mother and had a son,
-
3:54 - 3:57and finally decided it was time -- that he absolutely had to talk to us.
-
3:57 - 3:59I had become a mother
-
3:59 - 4:01and he was celebrating his 77th birthday,
-
4:01 - 4:04and suddenly I was very, very afraid.
-
4:04 - 4:06I feared he'd go
-
4:06 - 4:08and take his silences with him,
-
4:08 - 4:10and take his secrets with him.
-
4:10 - 4:12I managed to convince him that it was important for us,
-
4:12 - 4:14but possibly also for other people
-
4:14 - 4:16that he shared his story.
-
4:16 - 4:18He decided to tell it to me
-
4:18 - 4:19and I made a book,
-
4:19 - 4:21from which I'm going to read you some excerpts later.
-
4:21 - 4:24So, his story. My father was born in Argentina.
-
4:24 - 4:26His parents were of Russian descent.
-
4:26 - 4:30The whole family came to settle in France in the '30s.
-
4:30 - 4:35His parents were Jewish, Russian and above all, very poor.
-
4:35 - 4:38So at the age of 14 my father had to work.
-
4:38 - 4:39And with his only diploma,
-
4:39 - 4:40his primary education certificate,
-
4:40 - 4:43he found himself working at a dyer - dry cleaner.
-
4:43 - 4:46That's where he discovered something totally magical,
-
4:46 - 4:48and when he talks about it, it's fascinating --
-
4:48 - 4:51it's the magic of dyeing chemistry.
-
4:51 - 4:53During that time the war was happening
-
4:53 - 4:55and his mother was killed when he was 15.
-
4:55 - 4:58This coincided with the time when
-
4:58 - 5:00he threw himself body and soul into chemistry
-
5:00 - 5:03because it was the only consolation for his sadness.
-
5:03 - 5:06All day he would ask many questions to his boss
-
5:06 - 5:09to learn, to accumulate more and more knowledge,
-
5:09 - 5:10and at night, when no one was looking,
-
5:10 - 5:13he'd put his experience to practice.
-
5:13 - 5:18He was mostly interested in ink bleaching.
-
5:18 - 5:20All this to tell you
-
5:20 - 5:22that if my father became a forger, actually,
-
5:22 - 5:24it was almost by accident.
-
5:24 - 5:27His family was Jewish, so they were hounded.
-
5:27 - 5:30Finally they were all arrested and taken to the Drancy camp
-
5:30 - 5:33and they managed to get out at the last minute thanks to their Argentinean papers.
-
5:33 - 5:34Well, they were out,
-
5:34 - 5:37but they were always in danger. The big "Jew" stamp was still on their papers.
-
5:37 - 5:40It was my grandfather who decided they needed false documents.
-
5:40 - 5:44My father had been instilled with such respect for the law
-
5:44 - 5:46that although he was being persecuted,
-
5:46 - 5:48he'd never thought of false papers.
-
5:48 - 5:51But it was he who went to meet a man from the Resistance.
-
5:51 - 5:54In those times documents had hard covers,
-
5:54 - 5:55they were filled in by hand,
-
5:55 - 5:58and they stated your job.
-
5:58 - 6:00In order to survive, he needed
-
6:00 - 6:02to be working. He asked the man
-
6:02 - 6:04to write "dyer."
-
6:04 - 6:07Suddenly the man looked very, very interested.
-
6:07 - 6:10As a "dyer," do you know how to bleach ink marks?
-
6:10 - 6:12Of course he knew.
-
6:12 - 6:14And suddenly the man started explaining that
-
6:14 - 6:17actually the whole Resistance had a huge problem:
-
6:17 - 6:20even the top experts
-
6:20 - 6:23could not manage to bleach an ink, called "indelible,"
-
6:23 - 6:25the "Waterman" blue ink.
-
6:25 - 6:29And my father immediately replied that he knew exactly
-
6:29 - 6:30how to bleach it.
-
6:30 - 6:34Now, of course, the man was very impressed with this young man of 17
-
6:34 - 6:38who could immediately give him the formula, so he recruited him.
-
6:38 - 6:40And actually, without knowing it, my father had invented something
-
6:40 - 6:43we can find in every schoolchild's pencil case:
-
6:43 - 6:46the so-called "correction pen."
-
6:46 - 6:52(Applause)
-
6:52 - 6:53But it was only the beginning.
-
6:53 - 6:55That's my father.
-
6:55 - 6:56As soon as he got to the lab,
-
6:56 - 6:58even though he was the youngest,
-
6:58 - 7:01he immediately saw that there was a problem with the making of forged documents.
-
7:01 - 7:04All the movements stopped at falsifying.
-
7:04 - 7:06But demand was ever-growing
-
7:06 - 7:09and it was difficult to tamper with existing documents.
-
7:09 - 7:10He told himself it was necessary to make them from scratch.
-
7:10 - 7:13He started a press. He started photoengraving.
-
7:13 - 7:15He started making rubber stamps.
-
7:15 - 7:17He started inventing all kind of things --
-
7:17 - 7:20with some materials he invented a centrifuge using a bicycle wheel.
-
7:20 - 7:22Anyway, he had to do all this
-
7:22 - 7:25because he was completely obsessed with output.
-
7:25 - 7:27He had made a simple calculation:
-
7:27 - 7:30In one hour he could make 30 forged documents.
-
7:30 - 7:34If he slept one hour, 30 people would die.
-
7:34 - 7:38This sense of
-
7:38 - 7:41responsibility for other people's lives when he was just 17 --
-
7:41 - 7:44and also his guilt for being a survivor,
-
7:44 - 7:47since he had escaped the camp when his friends had not --
-
7:47 - 7:50stayed with him all his life.
-
7:50 - 7:52And this is maybe what explains why, for 30 years,
-
7:52 - 7:55he continued to make false papers
-
7:55 - 7:57at the expense of all kinds of sacrifices.
-
7:57 - 7:58I'd like to talk about those sacrifices,
-
7:58 - 8:00because there were many.
-
8:00 - 8:03There were obviously financial sacrifices
-
8:03 - 8:04because he always refused to be paid.
-
8:04 - 8:07To him, being paid would have meant being a mercenary.
-
8:07 - 8:09If he had accepted payment,
-
8:09 - 8:11he wouldn't be able to say "yes" or "no"
-
8:11 - 8:13depending on what he deemed a just or unjust cause.
-
8:13 - 8:15So he was a photographer by day,
-
8:15 - 8:16and a forger by night for 30 years.
-
8:16 - 8:18He was broke all of the time.
-
8:18 - 8:22Then there were the emotional sacrifices:
-
8:22 - 8:24How can one live with a woman while having so many secrets?
-
8:24 - 8:29How can one explain what one does at night in the lab, every single night?
-
8:29 - 8:32Of course, there was another kind of sacrifice
-
8:32 - 8:35involving his family that I understood much later.
-
8:35 - 8:38One day my father introduced me to my sister.
-
8:38 - 8:42He also explained to me that I had a brother, too,
-
8:42 - 8:48and the first time I saw them I must have been three or four,
-
8:48 - 8:50and they were 30 years older than me.
-
8:50 - 8:56They are both in their sixties now.
-
8:56 - 8:58In order to write the book,
-
8:58 - 9:02I asked my sister questions. I wanted to know who my father was,
-
9:02 - 9:04who was the father she had known.
-
9:04 - 9:08She explained that the father that she'd had
-
9:08 - 9:12would tell them he'd come and pick them up on Sunday to go for a walk.
-
9:12 - 9:14They would get all dressed up and wait for him,
-
9:14 - 9:16but he would almost never come.
-
9:16 - 9:20He'd say, "I'll call." He wouldn't call.
-
9:20 - 9:22And then he would not come.
-
9:22 - 9:25Then one day he totally disappeared.
-
9:25 - 9:26Time passed,
-
9:26 - 9:29and they thought he had surely forgotten them,
-
9:29 - 9:31at first.
-
9:31 - 9:32Then as time passed,
-
9:32 - 9:34at the end of almost two years, they thought,
-
9:34 - 9:38"Well, perhaps our father has died."
-
9:38 - 9:40And then I understood
-
9:40 - 9:43that asking my father so many questions
-
9:43 - 9:46was stirring up a whole past he probably didn't feel like talking about
-
9:46 - 9:47because it was painful.
-
9:47 - 9:52And while my half brother and sister thought they'd been abandoned,
-
9:52 - 9:54orphaned,
-
9:54 - 9:56my father was making false papers.
-
9:56 - 10:00And if he did not tell them, it was of course to protect them.
-
10:00 - 10:01After the liberation he made false papers
-
10:01 - 10:04to allow the survivors of concentration camps to immigrate to Palestine
-
10:04 - 10:06before the creation of Israel.
-
10:06 - 10:08And then, as he was a staunch anti-colonialist,
-
10:08 - 10:12he made false papers for Algerians during the Algerian war.
-
10:12 - 10:15After the Algerian war,
-
10:15 - 10:17at the heart of the international resistance movements,
-
10:17 - 10:19his name circulated
-
10:19 - 10:21and the whole world came knocking at his door.
-
10:21 - 10:25In Africa there were countries fighting for their independence:
-
10:25 - 10:28Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Angola.
-
10:28 - 10:32And then my father connected with Nelson Mandela's anti-apartheid party.
-
10:32 - 10:36He made false papers for persecuted black South Africans.
-
10:36 - 10:38There was also Latin America.
-
10:38 - 10:40My father helped those who resisted dictatorships
-
10:40 - 10:42in the Dominican Republic, Haiti,
-
10:42 - 10:48and then it was the turn of Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, El Salvador, Nicaragua,
-
10:48 - 10:54Colombia, Peru, Uruguay, Chile and Mexico.
-
10:54 - 10:56Then there was the Vietnam War.
-
10:56 - 10:58My father made false papers for the American deserters
-
10:58 - 11:01who did not wish to take up arms against the Vietnamese.
-
11:01 - 11:03Europe was not spared either.
-
11:03 - 11:05My father made false papers for the dissidents
-
11:05 - 11:09against Franco in Spain, Salazar in Portugal,
-
11:09 - 11:14against the colonels' dictatorship in Greece,
-
11:14 - 11:16and even in France.
-
11:16 - 11:19There, just once, it happened in May of 1968.
-
11:19 - 11:21My father watched, benevolently, of course,
-
11:21 - 11:24the demonstrations of the month of May,
-
11:24 - 11:26but his heart was elsewhere, and so was his time
-
11:26 - 11:30because he had over 15 countries to serve.
-
11:30 - 11:32Once, though, he agreed to make false papers
-
11:32 - 11:34for someone you might recognize.
-
11:34 - 11:37(Laughter)
-
11:37 - 11:39He was much younger in those days,
-
11:39 - 11:41and my father agreed to make false papers
-
11:41 - 11:44to enable him to come back and speak at a meeting.
-
11:44 - 11:49He told me that those false papers were the most media-relevant
-
11:49 - 11:52and the least useful he'd had to make in all his life.
-
11:52 - 11:54But, he agreed to do it,
-
11:54 - 11:57even though Daniel Cohn-Bendit's life was not in danger,
-
11:57 - 12:00just because
-
12:00 - 12:01it was a good opportunity
-
12:01 - 12:03to mock the authorities,
-
12:03 - 12:06and to show them that there's nothing more porous than borders --
-
12:06 - 12:11and that ideas have no borders.
-
12:11 - 12:13All my childhood,
-
12:13 - 12:17while my friends' dads would tell them Grimm's fairy tales,
-
12:17 - 12:21my father would tell me stories about very unassuming heroes
-
12:21 - 12:24with unshakeable utopias
-
12:24 - 12:27who managed to make miracles.
-
12:27 - 12:31And those heroes did not need an army behind them.
-
12:31 - 12:33Anyhow, nobody would have followed them,
-
12:33 - 12:37except for a handful [of] men and women of conviction and courage.
-
12:37 - 12:38I understood much later
-
12:38 - 12:41that actually it was his own story my father would tell me to get me to sleep.
-
12:41 - 12:44I asked him whether, considering the sacrifices he had to make,
-
12:44 - 12:46he ever had any regrets.
-
12:46 - 12:48He said no.
-
12:48 - 12:50He told me that he would have been unable
-
12:50 - 12:53to witness or submit to injustice without doing anything.
-
12:53 - 12:56He was persuaded, and he's still convinced
-
12:56 - 12:58that another world is possible --
-
12:58 - 13:01a world where no one would ever need a forger.
-
13:01 - 13:03He's still dreaming about it.
-
13:03 - 13:05My father
-
13:05 - 13:06is here in the room today.
-
13:06 - 13:11His name is Adolfo Kaminsky and I'm going to ask him to stand up.
-
13:11 - 13:31(Applause)
-
13:31 - 13:34Thank you.
- Title:
- My father the forger
- Speaker:
- Sarah Kaminsky
- Description:
-
Sarah Kaminsky tells the extraordinary story of her father Adolfo and his activity during World War II -- using his ingenuity and talent for forgery to save lives. This talk from TEDxParis is given in French; it has English subtitles by default.
- Video Language:
- French
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 13:40
federica bonaldi edited English subtitles for Sarah Kaminsky: Mon père, ce faussaire | ||
federica bonaldi added a translation |