This is Adolfo Kaminsky. During WWII, he saved the lives of 14,000 French Jews.
Adolfo was born on October 1, 1925 in Argentina to Russian Jewish parents who fled pogroms. In 1930 the Kaminsky family moved to France. After his mother was killed by the Nazis in 1941, Kaminsky joined the French resistance at age 17. He then worked in an underground laboratory in Paris where he spent the remainder of the war forging identity papers.
“I’ll always remember our biggest request for documents. 300 children in 3 days. It wasn’t possible. I had to stay awake as long as possible. Fight against sleep. The math was simple. In one hour, I made 30 fake documents. If I slept for one hour, 30 people would die. My biggest fear was making a technical mistake, any little detail that might escape me. On every document rests the life or death of a human being. So I worked, worked, worked until I passed out. When I woke up, I kept working. We couldn’t stop.”
Kaminsky passed away in January 2023.
May his memory be a blessing.
