Adolfo Kaminsky Read online

  The only respite I allowed myself was to go to the reunions organized by Jacques Lazarus, whom people called Captain Jacquel. That particular evening there was a dinner at his house, and Ernest suggested we go together. Lazarus was a former professional soldier who, after having been discharged by Pétain, had created a maquis unit then, later on, the Jewish Combat Organization. He, like Ernest, was one of those who’d escaped from the last convoy. I didn’t particularly feel like a ‘war veteran’, but I enjoyed going to these events to see my old pals. Most of them were helping the illegal immigration in one way or another and were aware of my work for the Haganah.

  Ernest came to fetch me by car that evening. He was accompanied, as too often, by Isidore, another member of the network, which tended to get on my nerves. How many times had I told Ernest that no one besides Pierrot and himself should know the address of the lab? Ernest did just as he pleased. The weapons that morning, and now his companion this evening—it was too much for a single day. I flew into one of my fits of rage that had earned me the reputation of being bad tempered. But Ernest put my mind at rest by assuring me he would come to collect his ‘gear’ in the next few days.

  Almost everyone had accepted Lazarus’ invitation. Etty, Giraffe’s sister, was a former member of the 6th, a woman with tremendous drive who belonged to a very active Marxist group. That evening she continually tried to speak to me alone. As soon as Ernest, Pierrot or Isidore came over she would slip away to another room in the apartment. Eventually, just as I was getting ready to leave, she put on her coat and threaded her way through the guests to go down the stars with me.

  “What you’re doing’s great,” she said as we walked home together. “But would you agree to help those who’re really fighting against the British?”

  “Who’re you talking about?”

  “The Stern group,” she replied in a whisper.

  I’d heard of what the British usually called the Stern gang, a group that had no hesitation in organizing attacks on the British army and police. The members wanted to liberate the country and combined their extreme nationalism with a ‘social-revolutionary’ ideology. For them the Arabs in Palestine weren’t the enemy, quite the contrary, they looked on them as potential allies in the struggle against the British imperialist yoke. The problem was that the Stern group’s terrorist activities were strongly condemned by the Haganah, which worked in the diplomatic field, negotiating with Britain and, moreover, didn’t hesitate to hand Stern group terrorists over to the British, who hanged them. That was why Etty kept quiet when members of the Haganah were around.

  She walked home with me and wouldn’t let me go in until I’d at least agreed to meet the leaders of the group in France.

  A few days later, during a meeting of four members of the French Stern group, Etty introduced me to Tibor Rosenberger, called ‘Voltaire’, a former member of the Hungarian resistance. He was a tall, elegant man, cultured and charismatic, with a passion for classical music and literature. He explained to me that there were various tendencies within the Stern group and that he totally disagreed with the extremists.

  However, he was disgusted with the Haganah fighting the British while at the same time assisting them and handing over members of the group to them. He explained his own stance: the idea was to push the British out by, let’s say, expeditious methods such as assassinations and ambushes. The majority of members of the Stern group were wanted by the police and needed forged papers to be able to move freely and avoid being hanged. But that wasn’t all. Tibor also needed forged papers to organize the illegal immigration of former members of the Hungarian resistance he was close to. What appealed to me most in what he said was the existence of a Judeo-Arab faction in Palestine. My ideal, like Tibor’s, was a Jewish-Arab state liberated from the British. After having talked together for hours and hours, we became friends, but terrorism remained our one point of disagreement. Added to that, there were risks in working for the Haganah and the Stern group at the same time for, even though they were pursuing the same goal, they were nonetheless at war with each other. But whatever they might have done, the lives of the wanted members of the Stern group were in danger, the British didn’t treat them with kid gloves. None of those who’d been caught had escaped the gallows. I agreed to set up a laboratory for him and to deal with urgent requests until they found another forger. In fact, I already had someone in mind, a person who wouldn’t need training and who I started looking for at once…

  Suzie was still at the same address, continuing her studies at the Beaux-Arts. I had no problem finding her and invited her to dinner. I remember her foot tapping the floor under the table and her shining eyes when I explained that I couldn’t work for both sides at the same time, that it was absolutely impossible for me to divide my working time in two and that if anyone in my network, Ernest or M. Pol, should hear of my double membership, it would be a disaster for the Stern agents.

  She cut me short, not even giving me time to put in my request, “I want to work for the Stern group!”

  From that day on I started my day in the Stern group’s lab on Rue Clerc, in order to go through the problems Suzie had come up against, then hurried on to Rue d’Écosse, all the time taking thousands of precautions to make sure I wasn’t being followed.

  Everything worked perfectly. I’d found a way of helping both sides without betrayal. That was until the day when the Stern group asked me to make a delayed-action clockwork mechanism, when I’d always been firmly opposed to taking part in acts of terrorism. I have to explain that in all the networks I worked for I was not only the forger, but also the technical specialist. Whether it was devising cases or bags with false bottoms or making films or photographing archives, anything that involved technical problems was my province. By means of some roundabout questioning, I worked out that they were preparing to assassinate the British Foreign Minister, Ernest Bevin, who was firmly opposed to British troops being withdrawn from Palestine and was generally seen as the main defender of the White Paper. On top of that he was said to have made outrageously anti-Semitic remarks.

  This business seriously troubled my conscience. I didn’t want to be party to the assassination of anyone at all. How could I have looked at myself in the mirror if I felt personally responsible for the death of a man, even if he were an enemy? But if I refused, someone else would take it on, of that I was sure.

  “So what did you say?”

  I agreed to do it. I made the clock that would set off the detonators of the bomb that would blow Bevin to pieces. A man called Avner was going to go off to England with the contraption and place it in the spot where the assassination was to happen. I’d met Avner some time previously, in the Rue Clerc laboratory. He was the Stern group’s man for dangerous missions. Their very own ‘Ernest’. He’d recently arrived from Palestine on a very badly forged passport that had led to a lengthy interrogation that he’d just managed to survive. He couldn’t take such a risk again and needed an impeccable passport. Avner told me that in the area where his kibbutz was, the kibbutzim lived in perfect harmony with the Bedouin villages around and that any conflicts that occurred were settled by delegates of the villages and the kibbutz, each showing great respect for the other. I loved that image. It confirmed me in my desire to go to that distant country, so full of promise. When, much later, I saw Avner again, he confessed to me, not without sadness, that the Israeli war of independence had finally driven the Bedouin out of the area.

  Avner left with the package, carried out his mission and returned to Palestine.

  We were supposed to hear of the death of Bevin through the newspapers. But a week later there was no word of it in them, and Bevin, very much alive, was attending a meeting of the cabinet. For a long time Avner must have wondered why the bomb hadn’t exploded and, should he read these pages, he’ll learn that the delayed-action mechanism I’d made was designed so it would never go off and, if it should, the plastic had been replaced by putty. An enemy or not, I had saved a life. No
one ever spoke to me about the failure of the bomb. Today I couldn’t care less if they could have thought me capable of such an act. Purely from the point of view of strategy, the assassination was really not a good idea, bearing in mind future negotiations. Anyway, we’d almost won the diplomatic battle. From the outset the United Nations had to decide between two proposals: two states, one Jewish, one Arabic, or a single, dual state. In either case Britain had been defeated and had to retire. Personally I was in favor of the second proposal, a mixed state, imagining its secular nature would cement peaceful coexistence, to my mind the only way of guaranteeing that everyone could practice their religion without one or the other dictating the laws. Utopian, you say? True, but that’s what I’ve always been and still am. The UN finally came out in favor of two separate states, a decision that was to come into effect on May 14, 1948, a date that is familiar to many people. In the meantime Great Britain retained the mandate over the territory but her troops had to withdraw as soon as the states were set up. It wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for, but it was a kind of victory.

  In conformity with the United Nations’ resolution, on May 14, 1948 David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the establishment of the state of Israel according to the agreed division of territory. The following day Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon attacked the nation that had just been born. It was at that time that the majority of my buddies in the organization emigrated to Palestine to help build the country. I had to make forged passports and visas for all my friends, and I watched as their photos marched past into the envelopes for M. Pol. When I saw Ernest’s photo, I knew that he wouldn’t be coming to pick up the weaponry he’d left with me. As for myself, I was to join them once I’d finished the work. But the months passed, and I no longer wanted to go.

  I was devastated by the war that was happening out there. While one side was soon going to be celebrating victory and the other lamenting their defeat, I continued to lug along my ‘mixed state’ and my bitter disappointment like a ball and chain on each leg. And then I’d imagined a communal, collectivist and, above all, secular state. I couldn’t bear the idea that the new state was choosing religion and individualism, because that represented everything I hated. A state religion, which came down to creating, once again, two categories of population: the Jews and the others. Had our victory over the British obscured all the ideals we’d been fighting for over the last two years? It was no use me explaining my reasons, trying to convince people—no one shared my doubts; I was the only atheist.

  “Are you saying you regret what you’d done?”

  Of course not. I was proud of having helped to facilitate the illegal immigration of tens of thousands of concentration camp survivors as well as of having contributed to the creation of the state of Israel, but I called M. Pol to tell him I wouldn’t be going there. I explained to him that I preferred the country that had chosen secularism and issued the Declaration of the Rights of Man, even if they weren’t always respected, and that I was still working underground. He took it very badly but, after all, I hadn’t taken the oath to the Jewish Army; I didn’t owe him anything. They all went, except me. I never saw them again, though I do know that for many years they were waiting for me to come.

  Adolfo Kaminsky at age nineteen. Self-portrait taken in the photography room, 1944.

  The chemical laboratory of the 6th section and the MLN. 21, Rue Jacob, 1944.

  Self-portrait of Adolfo Kaminsky in the Haganah’s laboratory for forged papers, Rue d’Écosse, 1947.

  Self-portrait taken in 1948 in the Forest of Fontainebleau. Adolfo Kaminsky chose the setting as an allusion to deportation.

  The dark room for developing film and for chemicals in the laboratory for forged papers in Rue des Jeûneurs. Photo taken in 1958.

  The lithographic press with its crank handle in the middle of the photographic projectors, Rue des Jeûneurs, 1958.

  The corner for enlargements and printing, Rue des Jeûneurs laboratory, 1960.

  Adolfo Kaminsky in his Rue des Jeûneurs laboratory, 1960.

  Francis Jeanson’s forged papers; here, two Belgian identity cards and a Moroccan passport.

  Hélène Cuenat’s forged papers when she escaped from prison in 1961.

  A Swiss driver’s license.

  A Swiss identity card.

  Portrait of Adolfo Kaminsky, 2009.

  1. “Aliyah”, a Hebrew word for the immigration of Jews to the Holy Land. Bet, the letter “B” of the Hebrew alphabet, expresses the clandestine nature of the organization of the immigration.

  2. Haganah (Hebrew: defense) was the Zionist military organization that eventually became the national army of Israel. [MM]

  3. On November 2nd, 1917 British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour declared “sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations” and wrote to the Zionist representatives: “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.” [MM]

  4. Evacuation and reunification service for children and families.

  7

  FEBRUARY 1961.

  “Six women held in La Roquette Prison escaped last night: three French, two Muslim French from Algeria and one Egyptian, all active members of the support networks of the FLN.1 They climbed over the prison walls in the middle of the night…”

  A week ago it was from the nasal voice of the Paris-Inter reporter that I learned the details of the way the girls, our ‘buddies’, had escaped from La Roquette. I allowed myself a smile of admiration. For some time now there’s been much talk of ‘those French who support the Algerians’, the ‘bagmen’ or ‘the lackeys of the ragheads’, depending on how sympathetic toward us they are. The gentlemen of the police in particular are taking a close interest in us. The last few months have been very trying. With the wave of arrests, the breaking up of the Jeanson network,2 then the imprisonment of Henri Curiel,3 those like me, who hadn’t been troubled yet, spent some hard nights. Fear, euphoria, days too full and nights too short, you get used to living at a hundred miles an hour, it’s almost become normal.

  Like every morning, I take stock of the orders in progress. My liaison agent Michèle Firk, alias ‘Jeannette’, is coming to collect six Belgian ‘packages’—ID cards, passports, driving licenses—and four Swiss ones, of which half are completed, for the French Federation of the FLN. Yesterday I had an unexpected visit from Roland Dumas, who brought news of Francis Jeanson, still in hiding. Made very famous by his sensational trial4 and sentenced in his absence, Francis is one of the most sought-after men in France. Roland has given me three photos of him—to be able to continue to move around he needs a French ‘package’. I also have a request pending for Spanish passports for a group of Basque revolutionaries wanted by Franco’s police. They’ll have to wait a while longer. The most immediately urgent matter is to deal with the women who’ve just broken out of jail.

  I put on my coat, gloves and scarf, slip the strap of my Rolleiflex round my neck. Hélène Cuenat’s hideout is in the Latin Quarter, and I can get there on foot. It’s windy outside, but there’s also that typical winter light, a low sun sending out red and orange beams, giving the passers-by bright eyes and a shining complexion.

  It’s a very chic, old, freestone apartment block, with marble and mirrors in the entrance hall and a big spiral staircase covered with a richly colored carpet.

  I knock at the door of the left-hand apartment on the sixth floor. “Oh, Joseph!” she cries. “Am I happy to see you!”

  “Me too, very happy.”

  “But come in, come in, take a seat.”

  While I’m making myself comfortable in one of the little armchairs arranged in a semicircle round the sitting room, Hélène shakes her hair and assumes the p
ose of a fashion model. “Well, Joseph, how do I look as a redhead? Come on, tell me what you think.”

  She bursts out laughing and comes to sit next to me.

  “Ah well, you can’t say we have a boring life,” she goes on. “What a business! It wasn’t all over just like that. Did you know that the cars that were supposed to pick us up when we’d gotten outside weren’t there?!”

  “I did hear, news travels fast. They must have had to drive off because of police patrols.”

  “Well… We still managed it all the same. We split up into two groups and took taxis. Just imagine, Jacqueline with only one shoe—she’d lost the other climbing the wall—and us in our dirty, threadbare, torn clothes, in the middle of the night, we must have looked like a sight!”

  Hélène roars with laughter then is silent for a moment, a pensive smile on her face. She runs her fingers through her red hair before going on: “Switzerland, Belgium or anywhere else, it can’t come soon enough. I’m fed up with being stuck inside.”

  “Exactly, that’s why I’m here. You’ve got different outfits ready for the photos? They mustn’t look as if they’ve all been taken on the same day.”

  She dumps a pile of clothes on the floor and starts to rummage around in them, like a child who’s just discovered a trunk full of disguises at the back of the attic.

  “I know, I know. I have to make some changes of style. I want a respectable suit, the secretary look, for crossing the border. Just look at this blouse. I’ll really look uptight in that. Just what I need.”

  I move some shelves to have a section of white wall for the background to the photos and place a chair in front of it for Hélène to sit on.

  “Have you already been to see the others?”

  “I’ve only been to Jacqueline before you.”