Adolfo Kaminsky Read online

  A few hours later I arrive at the rendezvous and, following instructions, wait beside the statue of Molière outside the Collège de France, carrying a book. I stand there, among the comings and goings of passers-by, students for the most part, and no one comes. I look around from time to time to see if I can spot someone who corresponds to my idea of a member of the Resistance. I don’t know why, but I imagine someone like Jean Bayer, tall, self-assured, relaxed.

  “Adolphe.”

  I turn round and find myself facing a short, slightly tubby young man with dark curly hair. He greets me normally, as if we’d known each other for ages so that there’s nothing suspicious about our meeting.

  “Penguin?”

  He checks there’s no one following us then we go into the Collège de France. “You’ve got the photos?”

  I quickly pass them to him, and he stuffs them into his pocket without pausing during our walk through the corridors.

  “We’re going to try to keep the initials of your real names for the papers. You were born in which year?”

  “1925.”

  “We’ll put ’26 to make you a bit younger. That way you’ll avoid the STO. As for profession, we’ll put student.”

  “No, that’s impossible! I have to work to earn my living.”

  “You have a trade?”

  “Yes, I’m a dyer.”

  At that moment a student brushes past and walks close to us. Penguin changes his tone of voice: “Do you remember her? Lucienne! Just imagine, I saw her again, purely by chance. She’s doing law now, and she’s still living with her parents…”

  The student walks on and Penguin continues. “You said you’re a dyer?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “So that means you know how to remove ink stains?”

  “Yes. That’s even my specialty. I’m also doing some chemistry.”

  “But what about indelible inks?”

  “There’s no such thing. They can all be removed.”

  Once more there are students close to us. Penguin looks all around and talks about other things, about a friend I’m supposed to know who can’t come to dinner tomorrow because he’s got flu. I start to get the idea, and we make small talk before going back to where our discussion broke off.

  “We’ve got a problem with Waterman’s blue ink. Impossible to remove it—it stands up to everything. Do you know what we need to do?”

  “No. I’d need to analyze it to see what it’s composed of.”

  “That I do know, it’s methylene blue.”

  “In that case it’s very simple. You need to use a reducing agent, lactic acid.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  Was I sure? And how! I tell him about the dairy chemistry in Vire, the chemistry books I’ve devoured, the stains on clothes, the bars of soap, the candles and even the detonators. He looks me up and down, then finally asks the question I’ve been expecting: “Would you be interested in working for us?”

  Two days later I have another rendezvous, same time, same place, to collect the forged papers for my family. From now on I’m Julien Adolphe Keller; Angel and Pauline have the same surname; my father’s become Georges Vernet. We’re all French born and bred—we’ve just been ‘naturalized’ by the services of the Resistance.

  Since there are lots of people around, Penguin talks to me about his cousin, who was supposed to be getting married but her fiancé’s broken it off, etc, etc… And I’m afraid he’s not going to mention the proposition he made me. I’ve been so excited I haven’t been able to sleep for two days. Just as we’re separating he tells me to go and take a room at the Young Men’s Hostel, a Protestant institution run by the Salvation Army, adding, “We’ll be in touch with you.”

  For three days I was tested to see if I was the kind of person who had a loose tongue. A medical student who also lodged at the Hostel came to see me every evening. He was very nice, or should I say too nice… He asked me lots of questions about myself, my memories, my family. Naturally I stuck to the official answers. I was Julien Keller, a dyer, the son of farmers from Lyons. That was all. On the fourth evening he came back with Penguin, who took me to a hotel on Place Maubert where two men were waiting for us in an ordinary room. ‘Giraffe’ and ‘Heron’, both of them around twenty-five, were introduced to me by their EIF names. They didn’t ask me a single question but made up for it by talking a lot… about me. From what they said, I understood that inquiries had been made and that they knew everything, right down to the death of my mother.

  Giraffe asked me to sit down at the desk, placed a blank identity card in front of me with a piece of paper containing all the information to be transferred to the card. All I had to do was to carefully copy out all the details in the handwriting of a little clerk in the mayor’s office who’d finished elementary school but nothing more. Anyone could have done it—it was just an initiation ritual, but I was extremely tense, I don’t know why. It was my first forgery. I will never forget that somber room, the smell of the wooden desk lit by a little lamp, the pen and the ink-well, and the presence of Penguin, Heron and Giraffe behind me, watching silently over my shoulder. I signed the identity card with a very French name and showed it to them. I had passed the first hurdle, but I was far from suspecting that it was the first step in a long life as a forger.

  1. A mass roundup of Jews in Paris by the French police in 1942, so named after the Velodrome d’hiver, the Winter Velodrome, where they were gathered. [MM]

  2. The name the Jews in Drancy used for the death camps.

  3. At the time the military academy of artillery and engineering. [MM]

  4

  MARCH 1944. After having walked along the Palais-Royal, I’m hardly out of breath when I get to the Hôtel Montpensier. Since I’ve stopped taking the metro, I’ve gotten used to walking without getting tired. At reception I ask for M. Lambert. A little lady of indeterminate age gives me the number of a room on the first floor. The doubts that have been tormenting me since I was told about this rendezvous increase as I go up the stairs to the room of the man who calls himself Lambert. If it’s a trap, then I’m caught in it.

  Well aware that, in wartime, distrust is one of the best means of survival, I go all through the corridor and make a quick analysis to note any possible escape routes I can use if there should be a problem. We’re on the first floor. There’s an elevator, the stairs and a window looking out onto the street. If I have to run, jumping out of the window would be the best way. At worst I’d be risking a sprained ankle. No security locks, I open the window now, you never know. Outside, the sky is threatening, plunging the city into twilight gloom. One last glance at my watch. It’s five o’clock, the time of my rendezvous.

  Earlier in the afternoon Otter came to the lab. He was returning from a meeting with Albert Ackerberg, the successor to Jacques Pulvert as head of the 6th section, and he ordered me to take a package of blank demobilization cards to a man I’d never heard anyone mention before, a M. Lambert in the Hôtel Montpensier. I’d found it surprising he didn’t take them himself; after all, that was his job. Usually my contacts had EIF ‘totem names’ unless they were women. To crown it all, the idea of meeting an unknown man in a hotel aroused my most paranoiac instincts. I protested.

  “Why aren’t you going yourself?”

  “It’s you he wants to see.”

  And why did this man want to see me? No idea. I must have shown some anxiety, for Otter felt he needed to reassure me: “Don’t worry, he’s definitely one of us.”

  But he said nothing more and went back to immerse himself in his notebooks, so I took the cards and left. So you see, that’s what it was like in those days. We didn’t talk a lot, and it would have been out of place to question an order.

  Room 18. I knock on the door. A soft, grave voice invites me to enter, and I find myself in the charming sitting-room of a hotel suite with bourgeois furnishings. Facing me is a man of around thirty with an intellectual look, tortoiseshell glasses on his nose.
“Monsieur Lambert?”

  I calm down a little when I detect, deep within his myopic gaze, almost as much distrust as there is in mine. If this man can be afraid of me, it means he certainly hasn’t come to arrest me.

  The man’s expression gradually relaxes until eventually he appears completely at ease. Perhaps it’s my frail physique that calms him down or simply the fact that I correspond precisely to the description he’s been given.

  “Maurice Cachoud,” he says in a friendly voice, grasping my hand.

  One word and my suspicions fade away. Cachoud, I know that name, and I can certainly confirm that this man is definitely one of us since he’s the person in charge of forged papers for the MUR (Mouvements unis de Résistance—Unified Movements of Resistance) in the South Zone. I’ve heard talk of him many times, but we’ve never met. I knew that he was based in Nice; in fact, we’ve corresponded on technical matters. Otter often asks me to note down my latest discoveries so he can send them to the other laboratories for forged papers, the most important of which are those in Grenoble and Nice. I’ve also heard rumors that, since the recent creation of the MLN, Cachoud has been responsible for centralizing the orders for forged papers on a national level, bringing all the networks together and that, in a certain way, makes him my ultimate superior in the hierarchy. To meet him in this way, without intermediaries and, what is more, at his request, is not a trivial matter. That is the moment at which I realize that I’ve just started to play in the major leagues.

  Cachoud invites me to sit in one of the armchairs around a small, low table. I pretend not to be impressed and make an effort to appear as relaxed as possible. As I’m making myself comfortable I see a head going past the half-open door to the bedroom. The head glances at us but then disappears without being introduced. I hardly had time to do more than make out a silhouette. Given it’s broad shoulders, it must be his bodyguard. Back in the sitting room, Cachoud comes straight out with the reasons why he’s gotten me to come.

  “I’ve heard a lot about you and your skills,” he says.

  Embarrassed, wavering between modesty and pride, I stammer that all I do is apply the things I’ve learned in chemistry and dying.

  “Do you know of an invisible ink that can be used for correspondence?”

  A ridiculous question from one forger to another. Of course I know of one, of several even. Nor is there any doubt that he must know lots about them himself. Deciding that the question must have been asked to test my knowledge, I play along and start scribbling down six formulas for invisible ink. At that moment the strapping man I glimpsed earlier on bursts into the room and goes to lean against the wall a bit farther away. Concentrating on the formulas, I don’t pay particular attention to him, but I do notice that the way he holds his head and his assured gait are not entirely unfamiliar. To me he seems to have a much too lordly air for a bodyguard, a distinctive sophistication mingled with much too much arrogance for my taste. If I admire his elegance, I don’t at all like the way he’s looking me up and down.

  I concentrate on my formulas, bending over my pen, and I sense him quietly come closer. When I look up he’s very close and leans over me.

  “What’s your name?” he asks in a voice of authority.

  “Julien.”

  “Yes, but your surname, what’s that?”

  “Keller.”

  A few seconds pass. As I continue to write down the formulas for my inks, I can sense his insupportable scrutiny that is still fixed on me. He comes even closer, so close that our noses are almost touching. He peers at me, examines me; if he could do it with a magnifying glass I’m sure he would. I’m about to stand up, close to breaking point, when he exclaims, “Adolphe?!”

  I almost have a heart attack. No one besides the people in the laboratory can know my first name.

  “Adolphe Kaminsky,” he goes on, his face a picture of astonishment, “Drancy!”

  I stare, wide-eyed, at this odd fellow, then finally I recognize him: “Ernest Appenzeller!”

  “Well I never!” he bellows, smacking the table, “So this ‘specialist’ is you!”

  Ernest, how could I not recognize him? And that, yes, what a surprise! Ernest, the man who’s ‘circumcised but not Jewish’, has changed his Drancy rags for a new suit, and the metamorphosis is so great that I’m completely flabbergasted. I stand there, dumbfounded, looking at him from head to toe while he moves his large body in sweeping gestures, all the time repeating the same words, like a scratched record: “Well I never!”

  In the three months we spent in Drancy, my family and I were the only ones to be released from the camp. And Ernest, who when we left was still denying he was Jewish, had only his silver tongue and his boyish good looks going for him. The likelihood of us seeing each other again was pretty remote.

  “You’re in the 6th?”

  “Yes. And you, you’re MLN?”

  “No, I’m with the MJS, attached to the OJC, the Jewish Combat Organization,” he says with pride in his voice.

  Combat was Ernest’s favorite word. Now I recalled all the times at Drancy when he’d said to me, “If I were a Jew I’d be a Zionist,” “if I were a Jew, I’d take up arms, go and fight with the maquis.” I also remembered the scorn he displayed for all those who’d quietly accepted wearing the star, all those who’d docilely gone to be registered in the mayor’s office, imagining that their civic obedience would guarantee their survival. And wasn’t that what my father and I had done? Ernest used to say that if the Jews had been persecuted since time immemorial, it was quite simply because they were the ideal victims because of their attitude of resignation, submission, and their aversion to combat. Ernest clicks his fingers, and a roguish smile appears on his lips as he takes a document with the Reich letterhead out of a drawer. “I really fooled you in Drancy, eh? And them too, those morons of the Scientific Commission. And Brunner, you should have seen the expression on his face when I showed him this document. Look.”

  He hands me a letter from the Scientific Commission, personally signed by the famous Professor Montandon: his certificate of Aryan descent, attesting that after a detailed examination Ernest corresponds to all the criteria of the Aryan race besides, of course, the minor detail of his missing foreskin, due to a phimosis, as the certificate states. Yes, he really did fool me. Like everyone else I believed his story of an operation. And the most unbelievable part of his story is that, in order to have his case examined by the Commission, he had to append both a birth certificate and a certificate of baptism to his file. And I was the one who fabricated those certificates in the lab of the 6th section, without knowing whom they were for! We have so much to tell each other! And from now on there’s something binding us. Like me, Ernest saw the thousands of shorn heads in Drancy and heard the moans during the nights. That brings us even closer together.

  Thus it is that I learn that Ernest is not only Jewish but the son of an Austrian Rabbi, has been underground since he was thirteen and a Resistance fighter for the same length of time. At first a young marksman, notable for his exceptional coolness, Ernest quickly rose through the ranks until he was entrusted with terrorist missions against the Nazis. Having become one of the elite agents in France; he then headed a team of marksmen, organizing and supervising targeted assassinations. Ernest, the ‘killer’ of the network, was equally expert at silencing informers. “You just have to eliminate one or two,” he tells me, firing a pretend pistol to illustrate his point, “and the others eventually hold their tongues if they don’t want to be bumped off as well.”

  Ernest’s ringing laughter gradually fades into silence. Cachoud has observed our joyous reunion dumbfounded, and the business of the invisible inks is forgotten. We go on to more serious matters. As for Ernest, this isn’t his field. After all the agitation at the start of the meeting, he sits there in silence, religiously puffing away at his pipe, forming an ‘O’ with his lips and emitting little smoke rings. Cocooned in the plush hotel suite, Cachoud subjects me to an interrogation on
technical matters. “Do you know how to reproduce imprinted watermarks? Relief stamps? Remove the ink on documents without affecting the color the paper has taken on with age? Make new paper look as if it’s old?…”

  I answer yes to all his questions. Even if sometimes I don’t know precisely how to do what they are asking, convinced that nothing’s impossible, I tell myself that if I rack my brains I’ll find something. And I always have.

  I wonder where these questions are going to take us; I have the feeling they’re just a prelude to some more complicated request. And indeed, after a while Cachoud breaks off and puts his hands together in front of his lips as a sign of reflection.

  “We have a problem with our photoengraver in Paris. Until recently he did the work without delay, then he slowed down his production and now he’s told us he’s stopping because he’s afraid his staff might be watching him. It’s a hard blow for the Resistance… You, who know how to do everything, could you set up a photoengraving studio?”

  I know nothing at all about photoengraving, but I do know my ability to learn quickly so, just as to all his other questions, I answer yes, though on one condition: that I can have a short period of training with the photoengraver in question.

  “My assistant René Polski will arrange that for you.”

  I leave the meeting with an order for demobilization cards to be printed—as usual it’s a matter of urgency, of course—and for a photoengraving laboratory to set up. Cachoud can return to Nice, satisfied with our discussion. Now he was going to be traveling between Nice and Paris until he settled permanently in Paris several months later, which meant that we’d be seeing each other a good few times.

  On my way home I head for the embankment to look for a book on photoengraving. On the stall of a freezing bookseller I find the two volumes of L. P. Clerc’s Photography Theory and Practice that was to be my bedside reading for the next few days.

  The next day I knocked at the door of M. Goumard’s photoengraving studio in Rue Saint-Denis.