Educational Media Reviews Online

A powerful film that explores the enigma of identity through the disturbing story of Adolfo Kaminsky, a talented master forger. During WWII he hid out in Paris in a secret laboratory, where he and others worked against time to provide fake ID cards for Jews in imminent danger of transportation to the concentration camps.

This is a poignant story, nostalgic and extremely moving, yet narrated in a cool, methodical manner strangely not at odds with the subject matter. Adolfo Kaminsky is 75 years old, alone and lonely, when this beautifully shot documentary begins. As he nears the end of his life, he attempts to secure closure with his past, and to re-connect with people he knew in Nazi-occupied Paris and other places. Not surprisingly, a number of those people he knew have disappeared, some are deceased, others unavailable. Those who are unavailable want nothing to do with Kaminsky, whom they consider part of a closed chapter, an embarrassment to their bourgeois lives, and, in one case, a danger to a son who's up-and-coming in the French political bureaucracy. He's shady to them, a criminal, dangerous to know. Only a couple of those interviewed seem to have been genuinely fond of him as a person, but all admire his great skills.

What did Kaminsky do that now causes him to be shunned by those with whom he worked so closely, in such dreadful times? In 1943, at the age of 17, his family transported to the death camps, alone and scared, this artful survivor was recruited by the French underground to provide false identity papers to Jews. The underground actively contacted French Jews, urging them to put off their yellow stars and take these papers and save themselves. One of the most poignant parts of this well-crafted film is that so many of them refused, believing that the French state, with its history of human rights for its citizens, would protect them in the end. Kaminsky was a genius with paper, dyes, and replication of official stamps. The segments in which he shows what he did to create the false papers are eye-opening. That he still seems extraordinarily capable of doing such things is equally amazing. His hands are steady, his gaze direct, his intellect intact.

After the war, he was at a loss. His colleagues dispersed: to Palestine, back to their comfortable middle-class comforts, or into the ether. Kaminsky had no home---his family's home in Vire, Normandy, had been destroyed, along with 90% of the town. His entire family had been killed by the Nazis. At loose ends, he's recruited to provide false identity papers for displaced persons hoping to emigrate to Palestine. Again, he's saving lives. The Palestine crisis over, he's then recruited by those aware of his reputation as a master forger to supply IDs and excise stamps for Algerians during the war France waged through the late 1950s and into the 1960s. In effect, he becomes a counterfeiter of money, as excise stamps were legal tender.

Kaminsky's skills are admired; his hard work and genius saves lives. Yet no one seems to want to know him when these crises pass Is Adolfo Kaminsky a hero or a criminal? He goes from Algeria to the FLN, working for "anti-imperialist" groups (i.e., guerrillas, freedom fighters, nationalist organizations, et al.) without discretion. What are his politics, his philosophy? It turns out that he's totally apolitical, a man who learned through bad experience not ever to trust government, any government, but rather to save lives wherever possible. He was the indispensable man, the enabler, the one on whom all others depended, the man whose unique skills saved people from torture and/or death. He does not seem to have asked questions anywhere along the journey; he simply did what he did what he was asked to do, well and willingly.

Highly recommended for Holocaust collections, public libraries, and universities. It is beautifully filmed and well-edited, with a good deal of appropriately used archival footage. Often, archival footage can be excessive and overwhelming, but this editor uses it effectively. The English subtitling is excellent.