Adolfo Kaminsky Read online

  And she smoked. She’d say, “You’re not a man yet, so I can tell you things. If you were older it’d be improper…” Or then, “Come and give me a kiss, Adolphe. Here, on my lips, you’re not very cuddly, are you…” and she’d burst out laughing. I think it amused her to debauch me a little.

  There were also a few men who became my friends. Jacques, a country guy, and Jean Bayer, a redhead from the north, very politically aware, who impressed me a lot because he’d been in prison for hitting his alcoholic father over the head with a hammer when he was beating his wife. He sang Tino Rossi songs and, above all, the songs of the Commune,2 revolutionary songs. He was a rebel. He had the charisma I dreamed of while I was still at the stage where I was trying to develop a confident demeanor. At the factory I learned to see myself as a grown-up. Now don’t laugh. The whole of my adolescence lies in those few months I spent there. I discovered politics. And there I was free and independent for the first time. That’s why it’s important.

  Then, one day, they arrived. It was June 1940. I’d bought a bicycle for the eight kilometers to the factory. Paul—who, like me, refused to submit to Léon’s fits of rage—had come to join me there, but in a different section. I was concentrating on trying to beat my bicycle speed record when I saw them coming toward me on the Vire road. The tanks.

  Brand new, as if they’d just rolled off the production line. And the soldiers all in gleaming boots and impeccable uniforms. Then I understood what my father meant when, seeing the French draftees in their uniforms that didn’t match, some without helmets, he said, “This time it’s certain. We’ve had it, we’re not going to win the war with an army like that.”

  I was alone on the road, face to face with them. I immediately turned around and pedaled off as fast as I could. I hadn’t realized they were so close. For me the threat was still far off, even though at the outbreak of the war I’d seen hundreds of refugees, transporting all their possessions along the roads as they fled before the German army. They came from Belgium and the north of France. We’d even put some up and they’d told us about their interminable march, interspersed with bombardments. Then they’d left, heading for another unknown destination. But we hadn’t moved. Once Léon had loaded the truck, ready to pack up and leave, but eventually he’d changed his mind, thinking there’d always be time to go later on. Everyone refused to believe the war would drag on like this.

  Once the Germans arrived, the factory closed down then reopened some time later to work for German aviation, with a ban on employing Jews. As for Jews, there were only two of us. Paul and I were thrown out. As we were being taken to the door, I heard a voice from behind the work benches: “London calling, London calling. Radio Paris is lying…”

  I immediately recognized the voice of my friend Jean Bayer, who, in his own way, was showing his solidarity with us. Some women applauded us, some workers whistled in protest, but the foremen quickly stopped the racket. The war had arrived in Vire.

  Rather than going back to working the markets, I quickly replied to an advertisement for an apprentice dyer. M. Boussemard was a chemical engineer, a former NCO in the French army who’d been demobilized for health reasons. He took me on to replace his assistant, who was a prisoner of war. At first he felt I was so young that my work was limited to lighting the boiler, but I very quickly extended my duties. There were shortages of everything and, since it was difficult to find reasonably priced clothes, what we most often had to dye were military uniforms and greatcoats from the ’14-’18 War, which we had to change from khaki to brown or navy blue to turn them into civilian clothes. Hard, tiring work, especially in winter. Each item had to be rinsed out in the river when the weather was icy. My own clothes would freeze on me and my hands were numb with cold, but I was being paid and, above all, it was there that I made my first chemical experiments. When the dye was put into the tub where the clothes were soaking, the water turned quite black but, as I was dumbfounded to see, once the process was finished the piece of clothing was black all right but the water was clear as spring water again.

  That was when the penny dropped. All of the dye had fixed on the textile, not on the water. “And that,” Boussemard explained, “is what shows that the operation has been successful.” Fascinated, I asked him if I could have some samples of dye to experiment on the offcuts lying around in my father’s workshop—he worked from home as a tailor’s assistant. Every day, as we stirred the clothes in the tub, I would ask more questions, and in the evenings I did my experiments in secret. I’d found my vocation. Boussemard was amused by my interest in chemistry and my dogged determination: “So far I’ve had employees who were happy just to do their work well. With you I have to talk all the time,” he grumbled.

  Despite his slightly uncouth manner, he was flattered that for once someone was interested in his knowledge. He explained the chemistry to me in the way you would pass on recipes. With him everything was simple. So you see, if I became interested in the effacing of inks, it was initially as a good dyer, to remove stains from the clothes.

  I immediately realized that you could do anything, as long as you were determined and found the right method. I quickly had proof of that. As you know, my first researches were into indelible inks, all of which I managed to delete. From then on at the dyer’s I became the one to deal with difficult, if not impossible orders. From towns all around people would come to me with stained lace communion gloves, silk wedding dresses. Anything that was supposedly beyond repair was my remit.

  The recurrent problem for the enthusiastic beginner in chemistry is dealing with material damage. At first I used the family kitchen for my experiments, the pans and my mother’s laundry boiler. But after a few mishaps, notably several explosions, one of which started a fire, chemicals were forbidden in the house.

  Since I was something of a handyman and had gotten into the habit of doing little jobs for my uncle, I persuaded him to allow me to use his old house, which he’d simply abandoned, for my laboratory.

  At that time I used to cycle past the drugstore in Vire every day without taking any notice of it. That was, until I saw something new in the window. There was a chemical laboratory for sale: retorts, balloon-flasks, a coiled condenser, a real treasure of which I didn’t even dare to ask the price. During the new few days I went past it again and again; the laboratory was still there. One week later I finally made up my mind to go in. M. Brancourt, the pharmacist, was whistling as he put some bottles away.

  “D’you want something, my boy?” he asked, seeing me eyeing the chemical laboratory.

  “Err… no, that is, yes, I’d like to know how much it costs.”

  “What do you want to do with it?”

  “Chemistry.”

  “What kind of chemistry?”

  “Every kind. Experiments. I work at the dyer’s, and I’ve already done some experiments on the effacing of inks. Now I’d like to go farther.”

  He didn’t name his price, but it was easy to see that if I wanted all the pieces, it would cost me a fortune. He demonstrated the equipment to me and even other pieces such as a copper vertical microscope I was sure I’d never be in a position to acquire. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched me marvel at every instrument, and he must have taken a liking to me. We talked chemistry. He was very knowledgeable. He had a doctorate in pharmacy.

  “Would it be possible to buy the laboratory bit by bit?” I asked timidly.

  “If you like, I’ll reserve it for you. You can come whenever you’ve saved enough to treat yourself to one piece.”

  I saved all my wages and, one after another, the different components of the laboratory went to my uncle’s old house. Brancourt sold them to me at prices that were one-tenth of their true value and even made a gift of the magnificent microscope, which I would never have been able to afford. In my free time I poured over whole books of chemical formulae. In the flea market in Vire I even managed to get ahold of a first edition of the treatise by Marcellin Berthelot, one of the fathers of che
mistry. I devoured everything I could find, right down to the practical advice in the Revue des chaumières (Cottage Review), in which I found thousands of very effective traditional tricks of the trade.

  To perfect my knowledge, I also went once a week to assist the chemist of the butter-dairy—without pay, and in return he gave me his theoretical knowledge and a little slab of butter. The producers who sold their cream to the dairy were paid according to the level of fat content. The volume or weight meant little, only the fat content counted, which meant they avoided possible cheating by crafty farmers who might add water to their cream. What we had to do wasn’t very complicated. We just dissolved some methylene blue in a sample of the cream and calculated how long it took for the lactic acid to make it lose the color. That seems a pretty trivial piece of information to you, doesn’t it? To me as well, at the time I would never have suspected it would be thanks to that knowledge that I would be recruited by the Resistance.

  Apart from being sacked by the factory, little had changed since the Germans had arrived. The war was still going on, yet it seemed to be happening far away, not really affecting us. There had been no obstacles put in the way of the German soldiers and they behaved in a civilized manner, paying without ever complaining. The storekeepers and tradesmen were delighted.

  There were, of course, the first Vichy laws. We were no longer allowed to have a post office account nor a savings bankbook. Under the edict of October 3, 1940, we had to register with the police. I remember going with my father for that. We were well known in the region, partly because of my uncle’s good reputation. The police clerk explained that as Argentines we were not subject to the requirement to declare ourselves Jews. But my father was keen to be irreproachable in fulfilling his civic duty toward France. I sensed that the clerk wasn’t in a hurry to register us, and was insistent about trying to get us to leave. In vain. He added our surnames, first names, dates of birth and address to his file. A few days later we ran into the police clerk in the street. In friendly tones, with a little smile on his lips, he said to my father, “Monsieur Kaminsky, I’ve lost your files, or perhaps they fell into my stove.”

  “I’ll come in tomorrow to reregister,”

  “But there’s no obligation.”

  “Oh but I must. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  This time we were put on file. As far as wearing the star was concerned, my father was less scrupulous. “If our nationality spares us the obligation, then we won’t wear it,” he declared.

  Eventually, however, the distressing events began to happen, though not exactly where you’d expect. One Sunday the Demoys, the couple who owned the town’s brothel, knocked at the door of the family home accompanied by a German officer. They wanted to ‘inspect’ the house. My uncle, no little proud of his fine residence, didn’t need to be asked twice. But then when they were upstairs, in the bedrooms, I heard howls of rage, and I saw Léon kick the German officer in the butt, sending him tumbling down the stairs in a thunderous clatter. From experience I could well appreciate Uncle Léon’s kicks. If it had been one of the Demoys who’d received it, I would have laughed, but as it was, I was terrified. On the doorstep my uncle bellowed, “My house a brothel?! Never!”

  During the next few days I anxiously awaited the consequences of the incident. For a whole month nothing happened. Then, one evening, two policemen, longstanding friends of Léon, arrived with the disastrous news. The fact that they were in civilian clothes was an ominous sign.

  “Kiki, they’re coming to arrest you tomorrow morning. You’ve got to get out of here.”

  “Where to?”

  “Anywhere you like as long as it’s somewhere far away.”

  My uncle left, without a suitcase, hardly with the basic necessities. He took the first train to Paris.

  A few weeks later the same policemen came to see us again. They wanted to warn my mother that the Gestapo had intercepted a letter she’d posted to her brother. They had his address in Paris. I know what you’re thinking. How could they be so naïve and continue to write to each other? I still can’t explain it. They were completely oblivious of what was happening.

  We didn’t have a telephone. My mother also took the train to warn him before it was too late. “I’ll be coming right back. ’Bye kids.” Then life went on again, with all the little problems of daily routine. The shortages. You couldn’t find anything anywhere, even the most basic necessities, and stocking up on things was getting more and more difficult. With my chemical lab I now knew how to make soap from carbonate of soda, candles—much in demand because of the power outages—from paraffin, wax polish.

  Brancourt, the pharmacist, regularly passed on to me orders for bars of soap to treat scabies, which had reached epidemic proportions in the region. I also found a supplier in Flers who gave me all the products he hadn’t managed to sell, which allowed me to distribute the whole of my production free of charge. One day he gave me hundreds of kilos of salt rendered unfit for consumption by the addition of iron oxide.

  Everyone was short of pure salt because the Nazis had controlled the sale to stop farmers salting their pork to keep it hidden instead of being requisitioned and sent to Germany. I dissolved the salt and filtered it, allowing the iron oxide, which was heavier than the salt, to form a deposit on the bottom; then I recovered the salt on the surface to let it dry and re-crystallize. A few days later it was pure again. I had such a large quantity to purify that I shared the salt out among the farmers and demonstrated the procedure to them. Everyone was at it, for months on end. Thanks to that, for a good while we were a little less hungry in Vire than elsewhere.

  With all this to occupy me on top of my work, I didn’t spend much time at home. My mother hadn’t come back, and a week later my father and Paul went off to find her. They came back after two days and reassured us. She’d contracted some microbe or other and was in hospital in Paris. Nothing serious, apparently. And then the days passed without them saying anything more about it.

  My reputation as a manufacturer of free bars of soap was soon all around town.

  The women, in particular were short of it for the washing. I used to go around the houses on my bike, which allowed me to see Dora again, the girl I used to walk to school with. The poor thing had had to give up school to look after her father, who was very ill and, with the passing of time, no longer frightened me. And it was my bars of soap that also kept me in contact with my former colleagues at the factory. I really liked seeing Cécile again. Even though times were hard, she was still as funny as she used to be. Except one time when she greeted me looking really down in the mouth.

  “Hi, it’s you. Would you like a cig?”

  “No thanks, I don’t smoke.”

  “Pooh… It’s because you’re still not a man. You ought to try it. On my sad days, I smoke even more.”

  “Sad? Why?”

  “You haven’t heard?”

  “What?”

  “Jean Bayer, from the factory.”

  “What’s he done?”

  “Gone and gotten himself executed by firing squad.”

  It was a rainy winter’s day at the end of 1940. I left on my bike and pedaled like mad, not going anywhere in particular, across the plain of Normandy. Jean Bayer dead. The first person dear to me that the war had torn away. Him with his cynical jokes, the eternal cigarette butt stuck in the corner of his lips, his offhand manners. I went through all the times I’d spent trying to be like him. I was pedaling against the wind. And then, lost in the tumult of memories, I suddenly realized the worst thing of all. My mother was dead. I realized just like that. A lot of water poured down my cheeks that day, and it wasn’t rainwater. It had taken Jean’s death to stop me being blind. What illness could have kept her in hospital all this time? Since my father had told us the story about some microbe, he had withdrawn into total silence. How could I not have understood? Even my little sister Pauline, who was only ten, had clearly expressed her concern.

  When I got home, I asked my fa
ther straight out, and he confessed. The railway company had found her body on the line. She was on her way back from Paris after having warned Léon, who’d disappeared at once. Paul had gone with my father to identify the body, which was why they took two days. Paul had been so traumatized at seeing “her head separated from her body and the bits of brain,” that he’d preferred to say nothing to us, the younger ones. But my father ought to have informed us. The detectives carrying out the investigation claimed she’d opened the door of the train while it was traveling, assuming it was the toilet door. And that’s what Paul preferred to believe, and still does today. My father brought in a Parisian lawyer to clear the matter up, but he was a Jew and was arrested and deported not long after. I have nothing but contempt for the accident theory. As far as I’m concerned, she was pushed; it was an assassination.

  “But no one can prove it?”

  Now you tell me: if someone told you I’d fallen out of the train because I’d confused the outside door with that to the toilets, what would you say?

  So there you are. That’s just the way it was. Anyway, a few days later something happened that corroborated my view: a letter from the Kommandantur ordering us to leave Léon’s house, which had been requisitioned by the German Military Administration and allocated to the Demoys for a price fixed by the Mayor’s office. The Demoys were taking their revenge. The house, transformed into an officers’ brothel, was never empty throughout the war. People say that the drinks and the girls there were delicious, and cheap.

  We were allocated accommodation by the Mayor’s office, on Place de la Gare with an old lady who had no say in the matter. Almost every day I went to see Brancourt, the pharmacist. After my mother’s death I threw myself body and soul into chemistry; it was my only reason for living. Brancourt was ready to help me every time I hit a snag in my research—he gave me loads of advice. But not just that, we talked about everything, especially the war. He was very humane, he was a good listener and gradually he became a kind of father in spirit.