Adolfo Kaminsky: a Forger's Life

The gripping true story of a life-long forger working for the French Resistance and clandestine organizations, told to his daughter. 

Subject of The New York Times documentary "The Forger," winner of a World Press Photo Award and an Emmy Award
As seen on 60 Minutes with Anderson Cooper

"[An] engrossing literary debut. ... Writing in Adolfo's voice gives this suspenseful narrative candor and immediacy." – Kirkus Reviews

Reader's Choice Award –Elle Magazine, France

Wall Street Journal's Top 10 Most Anticipated Non-Fiction: Fall Books 2016

"Every resistance movement had its forgers, but few have told their tales. Many, like Kaminsky, were very young technicians and chemists when they began their work. Sarah Kaminsky’s affectionate rendering of her father’s life, with all the intricacies of his trade, is a book not just about a remarkable craftsman, but a man who strove to save 'every life that was in danger.'” –Times Literary Supplement

Best-selling author Sarah Kaminsky takes readers through her father Adolfo Kaminsky's perilous and clandestine career as a forger for the French Resistance, the FLN, and numerous other freedom movements of the twentieth century. Recruited as a young Jewish teenager for his knowledge of dyes, Kaminsky became the primary forger for the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation of Paris. Then, as a professional photographer, Kaminsky spent the next twenty-five years clandestinely producing thousands of counterfeit documents for immigrants, exiles, underground political operatives, and pacifists across the globe. Kaminsky kept his past cloaked in secrecy well into his eighties, until his daughter convinced him to share the details of the life-threatening work he did on behalf of people fighting for justice and peace throughout the world.

Sarah Kaminsky (b. 1979 in Sidi M’hamed, Algeria) is a French actor, screenwriter and author. She was 3 years old when she immigrated to France with her father, of Russian Jewish origins and carrying an Argentinean passport, and her mother Leïla, a Tuareg Algerian. Her first book is the biography of her father, Adolfo Kaminsky, published by Editions Calmann-Lévy in 2009. It has sold over 12,000 copies in France and has since been translated into Italian, Hebrew, German, Spanish, Turkish, and Arabic. Sarah Kaminsky is currently employed as a screenwriter by several production companies in France and lives in Paris with her partner Alban and her son.

Mike Mitchell (b. 1941 in Rochdale, England) is an award-winning translator of French and German who has been active as a translator for over thirty years. He is the recipient of the Schlegel-Tieck Prize for translations of German works published in Britain, has won the British Comparative Literature Association translation competition three times, and has been shortlisted for many awards including the French-American Translation Prize, the Weidenfeld prize, the Aristeion prize, the Kurt Wolff prize, and the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger. In 2012 the Austrian Ministry of Education, Art and Culture awarded him a lifetime achievement award as a translator of literary works. He lives in Scotland.

Adolfo Kaminsky (b. 1925 in Buenos Aires, Argentina) made his living as a photographer in various fields: postcards, advertising photos, but also photo reportage on industry (for example, the coal mines of the North and the French sugar refineries). He took numerous photographs of works of art for exhibition catalogues and posters, and he was the regular photographer for the painters who were the precursors of kinetic art such as Antonio Asis, Jésus Soto, Carmelo Ardenquin, and Yacov Agam. As a specialist for giant-format photography he produced photos for film sets for Alexandre Trauner, the set designer for Marcel Carné, René Clair and others. He also took thousands of artistic photographs through his life, but has only recently started exhibiting them.