I didn’t know then, but a new story was about to begin, a story as rich and beautiful as the previous one. The book had a tremendous reception, which took us by surprise. It sold very quickly in the bookstores, and we were very much in demand with the press. There were laudatory portraits in the national and regional media, appearances on television and radio, reports on the TV news. I was asked to give a video-recorded talk on TEDxParis, which also contributed to the great buzz the book created. There followed one translation into a foreign language after another: Italian, German, Spanish, Hebrew, Arabic, Turkish and now English. We traveled around all those countries, met readers, booksellers, journalists. We haven’t stopped spending time together, precious time, and the adventure of the book continues to this day. We regularly go to schools and colleges, where my father speaks. That’s what he prefers above all: passing on his knowledge. The first time he addressed a hundred or so pupils of sixteen to seventeen, he was very moved by their empathy and attention at an age when people are often unruly. You could have heard a pin drop in the hall. They were completely absorbed in the story he was telling them, asking astonishingly pertinent questions. On the way home my father said, “Did you see how attentive they were? I’d never have thought young kids could be interested in an old dinosaur like me.” I pointed out to him that those ‘kids’ were exactly the same age as he’d been when he joined the Resistance, which made it all the more easy for them to identify with him.
During book signings and meetings with readers quite a few people came along with old forged papers that had belonged to their parents or grandparents to see if, by chance, they happened to have been made by my father. These people confided in us, hoping to discover some chapters of their own family history through ours. We listened to so many stories, met so many remarkable people, that there would be no point in even trying to go into them all here. Among the questions I was repeatedly asked, I have chosen one directly concerning the process of writing which I would like to answer here: Why is the book written in the first person, as if my father were relating his own story, while I wrote it myself? In fact I started the manuscript in the third person and in the past tense. But, after having developed several chapters, I got stuck in the narrative, incapable of continuing. It wasn’t the well-known ‘writer’s block,’ since I knew exactly what I wanted to write. I was paralyzed. For months on end, with no idea why, the very thought of sitting down at my computer made me feel ill. I decided to take a break and devote myself to other activities. The weeks passed, and I still couldn’t find a solution to my problem; I was starting to have serious doubts about my ability to complete the project. That is, until the day I realized that talking about my father in the past tense was as good as writing his obituary in advance. So while he was there in front of me, very much alive, replying to my questions, I had the feeling I was pushing him into his grave. I had a revelation: I had to let him speak! I deleted all my work and started from the beginning again, using the first person, giving him a voice.
On October 1, 2015 my father turned ninety. His life today, together with my mother, is a world away from the torments he suffered during his years underground. He’s happy to be a husband, a father and a grandfather. And particularly active for his age… For since the publication of the book he’s started out on a new career. I’ve already mentioned the personal sacrifices he had to make. There is one that I’ve omitted. Refusing payment from the resistance networks that he served throughout his life, he made his living as a photographer in various fields: postcards, advertising photos, but also photo reportage on industry (the coal mines of the North, the French sugar refineries…). He took numerous photographs of works of art for exhibition catalogues and posters as well. And he was the regular photographer for the painters who were the precursors of kinetic art such as Antonio Asis, Jésus Soto, Carmelo Ardenquin, Yacov Agam… As a specialist for giant-format photography he produced photos for film sets for Trauner, the designer for Marcel Carné, René Clair…
Alongside this work he continued to take, for his own satisfaction, thousands of artistic photographs in the hope of exhibiting them one day. He developed the rolls of film and stored them in shoe boxes that he piled up on top of each other, without ever printing out the photos, because he had neither the time nor the financial means, so that no one has ever seen his work. Thousands of negatives hidden in boxes, what a waste! There are irreparable sacrifices, but this was not one of them, and it was perhaps not too late to start out on a career as a young photographer, even though he was over eighty. He finally decided to print his photos and unveil his artistic work with, as his favorite subject, a view of the world in chiaroscuro where the protagonists are workers, secret lovers, dealers in secondhand goods, real or pretend models, dislocated dolls, bearded hobos… From the flea market of Saint-Ouen to the neon lights of Pigalle he has captured the looks, the solitary silhouettes, the lights, the elegance and the fringes, everything that goes to make up his universe. With the support of friends we have arranged several exhibitions at cultural organizations and Parisian galleries. His unpublished photos have had a great success. It was extremely moving to see him talking about his photos with other photographers, recognized by his equals (of which he was the doyen, of course).
Today my son is twelve. When I was his age, while my friends’ dads were reading them Grimm’s fairy tales to get them to sleep, my father was telling me stories about very ordinary heroes. These unassuming heroes had such a strong belief in their ideals that they managed to realize them when it seemed impossible. These heroes had no army behind them. In general they were just a handful of men and women of conviction and courage. At the time I didn’t know that it was his own story my father was telling me. I did, however, understand what he was trying to pass on to me through these part-metaphorical, part-biographical ‘stories’. They are the stories that I tell my son today to help him always believe in his dreams.
—Sarah Kaminsky
OCTOBER 2015
Prologue
“SINCE YOU WANT TO KNOW everything, tell me what you think you know about my life. For example, when did you learn that I was in the Resistance?”
“To be honest, I don’t know. Even less about you being a forger. If we’d stayed in Algeria I might never have known about the Second World War. For me you were the Mujahid, as they say.”
“But afterwards, in France, you knew?”
“Not right away. You didn’t talk to us about it. I grew up thinking I was the daughter of a social caseworker who helped rehabilitate young delinquents, found work for them, taught them photography. But by keeping my ears open when the grown-ups were talking I got some hints, in bits and pieces. There were contradictions in what I learned—everything was confused. It was through a series of external events that I came to understand. There was that article in Minute, the extreme right-wing weekly. You remember?”
“Of course, I’ve even kept it. There, look.”
“‘The ex-forger rebuilding his life on moral principles. Today a former forger is keeping young people on the straight and narrow. This ex-member of the Jeanson network, who supported the Algerian FLN against the French, has now taken on the task of helping our delinquents from North Africa get back into society…’ Well, well!”
“After this article appeared, some of the young people I was dealing with made jokes—in pretty poor taste, I have to say: ‘I have a cousin who needs some papers,’ or: ‘I happen to need several thousand francs.’”
“I remember much later, when you were putting the file of material for our request for French citizenship together, I saw some letters. There was one that aroused my interest. It was an expression of gratitude for your work for the French Army intelligence and counter-intelligence services in 1945. I said to myself, ‘Wow, my father a secret agent!’ Depending on people’s point of view I heard you called a forger, a Resistance hero, a traitor, a secret agent, an outlaw, a mujahid…”
“And what did you