Читать книгу Adolfo Kaminsky: A Forger's Life - Sarah Kaminsky - Страница 7

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 think of all that?”

“That one day I’d have to clear it up. Look, I’ve made a list of people I’d like to ask about you.”

“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.