“Let me have a look… Hey, it’s a long list you’ve got there. Your work’s going to be complicated. They’re almost all dead.”
When we’d finished scoring out the names of all those I couldn’t interview, my list had been reduced by half and my father said, “That’ll mean less work for you,” making a joke, as he did every time painful subjects were broached.
Death, time. He’d just highlighted the reasons why I had to write this book. And quickly, before it was too late. So that he shouldn’t pass away taking his secrets, his story with him, so that the questions his life raised should not remain unanswered.
It took me two years of research and some twenty interviews before I got to know Adolfo Kaminsky, who I only knew as ‘Papa’:
decoding his silences, detecting between the notes of his monotone delivery things he didn’t put into words, understanding the parables and finding the messages hidden beneath the series of anecdotes that filled my notebook. And sometimes I needed to see the way other people looked at him to understand his choices, his life as a forger, his work underground, his political commitments, his inability to understand society and the hatred motivating various groups that encumbered it, his desire to build a world of justice and freedom.
Contents
Preface
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Epilogue
Photographs by Adolfo Kaminsky
Acknowledgments
Biographies
PARIS, JANUARY 1944. When I get to the entrance of the Métro at Saint-Germain-des-Prés, I hurry down without wasting any time. I need to get to the eastern part of Paris, a train heading for Père-Lachaise. I choose a folding seat, keeping away from the other passengers. I have something precious in my attaché case, which I clutch to my chest. I tick off the stations mentally as they pass. République, only three to go. There’s noise, voices coming from the next car. The train has been whistling for several seconds now, but the doors aren’t closing. The sound of voices is replaced by footsteps, loud, sharp, very distinctive. I recognize them at once. A burning sensation sears my chest at the very moment a Militia patrol, with their armbands and their berets pulled down tight over close-shaven heads, bursts into the car. A sign to the driver and the doors close.
“Identity check! Have all bags ready to be searched.”
I don’t look around at them. I wait my turn right at the end of the car. I’ve been used to police checks for ages now, but today I’m frightened.
Keep calm, conceal my emotions. Above all, they mustn’t give me away, not today, not now. Stop my foot from tapping out the imaginary rhythm of a frenzied tune. Stop that drop of sweat from running down my forehead. Stop the blood from pounding through my veins. Slow down my heartbeat. Breathe slowly. Hide my fear. Stoical.
Everything’s fine. I have a mission to carry out. Nothing’s impossible.
Back there, just behind me, they’re inspecting identity cards, rummaging through bags. I have to get off at the next stop. There’s a militiaman guarding each door; it’s obvious I have no chance of avoiding the check, so I get up and go, confidently, to show my papers to the militiaman who’s making his way toward me, waving my hand to show that I have to get off soon. He reads the details on my card out loud, ‘Julien Keller, seventeen, dyer, born in Ain, Creuse département…’ He turns it over and over to examine it from all sides, looking up now and then to observe my reaction with his little suspicious eyes. I remain calm, I know he can’t see how afraid I am. I also know, and I’m sure of it, that my papers are in order—I was the one who fabricated them.
“Papers in order… Keller, is that Alsatian?”
“Yes.”
“And what have you got in there?”
That’s exactly what I wanted to avoid. The militiaman points to the attaché case I’m holding, my hand clutching the handle nervously. For a brief moment I think I can feel the ground giving way beneath me. I’d like to take to my heels and clear off, but any attempt to flee would be futile. A wave of panic makes my blood run cold. I have to improvise, and do it quickly.
“Are you deaf? What have you got in there?” the militiaman asks, raising his voice a little.
“My sandwiches. Do you want to see them?” Suiting the action to the word, I open my attaché case.
No problem, there are some sandwiches inside. They just have to conceal the things I have to hide at all costs. After a moment’s hesitation, the militiaman gives me a hard look, scanning my face, searching for any weakness. So I give him my most inane smile, something I’ve always been able to do when necessary: to look very stupid. The following seconds seem like hours. We’ve reached Père-Lachaise station, and the train is whistling to indicate the doors are going to close.
“OK, you can go.”
I remember very well the shrill whistle of the wind over the graves in the cemetery. Sitting on a bench by one of the paths in the Pére-Lachaise, I hadn’t come to sit and meditate. My teeth were chattering, my body trembling. I’d had to get out of the metro and drag myself to the cemetery in order to find the solitude I needed to pull myself together again and allow the feelings I’d kept hidden beneath an apparent calm to resurface. I called that the retrospective shock: the body ridding itself of repressed emotions. I just had to wait patiently for my pulse to get back down to normal, for my hands to stop clenching, to relax. How long did it take? I don’t know. Five or ten minutes perhaps. Enough time for me to get cold and collect my thoughts. Enough time for me to remember why and for whom I was there, taking risks, and to remind myself how urgent the deliveries were that I was to make. It was this sense of urgency that finally pulled me out of my stupor in the oppressive silence of the cemetery, reminding me that I hadn’t a minute to lose. No time to feel despair or self-pity, afraid or discouraged.
I get ready to set off again. Before I get up, I open my attaché case, taking every precaution, for one final check. I lift up the sandwich. Everything’s still there. My treasures. Fifty blank French identity cards, my pen, my ink, my rubber stamp and a stapler.
On that day, as on so many others before, I knock at all the doors on a list I was given the previous day and that I’ve spent the night learning by heart: the names and addresses of dozens of Jewish families who, according to what the network has learned thanks to sympathizers who’ve infiltrated the bureaucracy, are to be rounded up at dawn. I go up the Boulevard de Ménilmontant then take the Rue des Couronnes to get to the alleys behind the Boulevard de Belleville. Each time new faces are superimposed on these unknown names. Rue du Moulin-Joly, the Blumenthal family, Maurice, Lucie and their children, Jean, Éliane and Véra, have taken the forged papers, now their life underground is beginning.
In the best cases they already have passport photos, I just have to staple them to the blank identity cards then carefully fill them out in the handwriting of a city hall clerk. Sometimes they’re happy to take the forged papers but haven’t got the necessary materials needed to complete them on the