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"If I Sleep for an Hour, 30 People Will Die"

(New York Times) Pamela Druckerman - In 1944, in occupied Paris, four members of a Jewish resistance cell spent their days in a narrow room atop a Left Bank apartment building. The neighbors think they're painters - a cover story to explain the chemical smell. They're operating a clandestine laboratory to make false passports for families about to be deported to concentration camps. The lab's technical director is Adolfo Kaminsky, age 18. By his 19th birthday, Kaminsky had helped save the lives of thousands of people by making false documents to get them into hiding or out of the country. Now 91, Kaminsky lives in a modest apartment for people with low incomes, not far from his former laboratory. He says he never accepted payment for forgeries. "The smallest error and you send someone to prison or death," he told me. Years later he's still haunted by the work, explaining: "I think mostly of the people that I couldn't save." At one point, Kaminsky stayed awake for two nights straight to fill an enormous rush order. "It's a simple calculation: In one hour I can make 30 blank documents; if I sleep for an hour, 30 people will die." Historians estimate that France's Jewish resistance networks together saved 7,000 to 10,000 children. His daughter Sarah learned her father's whole story only while writing a book about him, Adolfo Kaminsky: A Forger's Life, whose English translation comes out this week.
2016-10-07 00:00:00
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