8 ms·

As a teenager, Adolfo Kaminsky forged passports to help children flee the Nazis

153 points by aaronbrethorst 10y ago

zigzigzag 10y ago
Hmm. Great story, although it gets somewhat dark towards the end. He may have started out as a noble forger saving children from the Nazis but it sounds like he kept going for decades and made false passports for whoever wanted them, no questions asked. "I can't deal with the details because all humans are equal" sounds a lot like post-hoc rationalization. Forging passports is all about dealing with tiny details. Understanding why your customers want false papers seems a lot larger than just a "detail". He wouldn't have forged papers to help the Nazi's I assume, but apparently after the war ended he somehow lost his discerning nature. I'm also 100% not buying his story about never doing it for profit. During WW2, sure, I can buy that. For the three decades he continued afterwards, when it was apparently close to full time work? He was a professional underground forger who made passports for whoever wanted them, no questions asked, even as the difficulty and sophistication of the needed equipment constantly rose. Hell yes he asked for money.
- r2dnb 10y ago
  I guess the millions of innocent people deported and killed by the nazis in front of him gave him a different perspective on what's a detail and what's not. Perspective probably different than green-pastures-based ones. I do not endorse breaking the law, and I wouldn't do it myself. But sometimes it is possible to understand where other people are coming from.
  - zigzigzag 10y ago
    Sorry, that doesn't work for me. Lots of people came out of WW2 scarred but did not go on to become professional criminals. The article flat out says that some of the groups he worked with were rebel forces in Africa trying to overthrow governments, not exactly people who are famous for their cuddly nature.
    - r2dnb 10y ago
      >The article flat out says that some of the groups he worked with were rebel forces in Africa trying to overthrow governments, not exactly people who are famous for their cuddly nature. Granted, thanks for insisting I didn't realize that, missed that part. I think like you that his good intentions might have gone too far and turned into rationalized behaviour.
      - ceejayoz 10y ago
        That statement could cover anyone from Joseph Kony to Nelson Mandela.
    - Bootvis 10y ago
      The article doesn't state which rebel groups that used violence he supported. It could well be that the rebel groups that 'used violence in Africa' are the independence fighters in Algiers and the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. It could well be his work supported other rebel groups that didn't deserve any support but you can't conclude that from the article.
    - kchoudhu 10y ago
      > rebel forces in Africa The Battle of Algiers covers that particular mess, and it was straight out banned in France until 1971, five years after its release. It took that long for the French to admit that they were perhaps not the aggrieved party in that particular conflict.
    - rangibaby 10y ago
      I don't think "fake passports for rebels" would even warrant a mention on a list of "bad things that happened in Africa in the 20th century". Or the 21st century. They've already had a war that would've counted as a "World War" if it were in Europe or America. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Congo_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Congo_War
- bisRepetita 10y ago
  Why do you say "whoever wanted them"? >Mr. Kaminsky says he never accepted payment for forgeries, so that he could keep his motives clear and work only for causes he believed in. Many people give money or time to a cause they believe in, why not him? In any case, it would be nice if you back up you assertion with something.
  - zigzigzag 10y ago
    Yet he also says he didn't care who he made forged documents for because everyone is the same. Those two positions are contradictory: either he was very discerning about his clients and they were not all the same, or the motives of his clients were details and he didn't pay attention to them. He claims both at once.
    - ceejayoz 10y ago
      > Yet he also says he didn't care who he made forged documents for because everyone is the same. I've read the article 3x now trying to find this statement. I can find stuff like he'd "work only for causes he believed in". I can find where he says "All humans are equal", but that hardly means what you make it out to mean (hell, the US Declaration of Independence says that; doesn't mean the US issues visas to ISIS). The need for fake documents to escape violence hardly ended with WWII. I owe my existence to a Soviet customs agent who accepted a bribe to seal my grandfather into a Czech cargo train.
      - zigzigzag 10y ago
        Here: “I saved lives because I can’t deal with unnecessary deaths — I just can’t,” he told me. “All humans are equal, whatever their origins, their beliefs, their skin color,” he later added. “There are no superiors, no inferiors. That is not acceptable for me.” He describes his work as "saving lives" in every case, as if every passport he ever made was for someone running from persecution, as if every case for 30+ years was as black and white as WW2. Yet the article also says "He went on to forge papers for people in practically every major conflict of the mid-20th century" and that he did it full time. That doesn't sound very discerning to me. Unless you're going to claim that 20th century conflicts were all a simple matter of good vs evil which could be immediately assessed. He can claim whatever he likes about his life and how he always chose the side of the angels in every single conflict - there is presumably no good way to check the veracity of his claims. But color me skeptical.
- anotheryou 10y ago
  Many survivors fight for good cause a life long. I met one who said today he'd try to become a hacker. I think it is very plausible and his underground contacts through which the later forging happened provided some trust. He would also see the amount of children he makes passports for and know their destination. He also might have forged easier to fake passports of neighboring countries, rather than EU/US ones. The other thing is: Who needs fake passports anyways? Armies certainly don't. That leaves refugees, terrorists and corrupt people. Terrorists and corrupt people probably are organized enough to have someone among themselves to do their passports. The bit of control about who gets his passports might have been good enough for him to decide it will do more good than harm.
  - zigzigzag 10y ago
    From Wikipedia: Starting in 1963, he assisted various leftist movements from Latin America (Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Colombia, Peru, Uruguay, Chile, Mexico, Saint-Domingue, Haiti), Africa (Guinea-Bissau, Angola, South Africa) and from Portugal (then under Salazar's dictatorship) and Francoist Spain.[6] He trained a lot of people in forgery in order to support them in their struggle against dictatorships. I'm not sure who wrote that wiki page, but "leftist movement" in the context of mid-20th century Latin America means groups like FARC, which were very much armies and terrorists. The claim that this was done "against dictatorships" is very clever: it is technically true but disguises the fact that the groups he supported were simply trying to replace the current dictatorship with their own. Moreover, the moment you train lots of people, you obviously lose any ability to control how those skills are used. The more I read about this guy the more grey his story becomes.
    - wazoox 10y ago
      Yeah, fucking communists, how do they dare fight fascists? you make me sick, man.
    - bisRepetita 10y ago
      So you think it was overall a bad thing that he fought against dictatorship in Portugal, Spain, and many South American dictatorship? You think the world would be a better place with more dictatorships, Pinochet-style leadership? I understand you can dislike the FARC. I hope you have the same level of disdain for the Colombian paramilitaries and Government exactions. "According to several international human rights and governmental organizations, right-wing paramilitary groups have been responsible for at least 70 to 80% of political murders in Colombia per year, with the remainder committed by leftist guerrillas and government forces." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_paramilitarism_in_Colombia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_paramilitarism_in_C...
- dmoo 10y ago
  Just wondering what the ethical difference is between making false papers allowing anonymous travel and making encryption allowing anonymous communication?
- goodcanadian 10y ago
  "I can't deal with the details because all humans are equal" You appear to have misquoted. The word was not details; it was death: “I saved lives because I can’t deal with unnecessary deaths — I just can’t,” he told me. “All humans are equal, whatever their origins, their beliefs, their skin color,” he later added. “There are no superiors, no inferiors. That is not acceptable for me.”
nstj 10y ago
> “The smallest error and you send someone to prison or death,” he told me. “It’s a great responsibility. It’s heavy. It’s not at all a pleasure.” Serious dedication to the cause. A splendid story.
nefitty 10y ago
A lot of us work and live for acknowledgment. There are so few brave enough to work and live for effect.
qwrusz 10y ago
Related Question: apologies my background is not tech, does anyone have insight if "hacking" documents like this is easier or harder today as things move digital? Ignoring paper passports for a moment, as records move to digital over physical paper, will adding or removing names become easier or harder? Thinking of the guy who was able to fake a first class lounge airplane ticket: https://mic.com/articles/150812/this-guy-figured-out-how-to-hack-his-way-into-fancy-airport-lounges#.104VAW7IG https://mic.com/articles/150812/this-guy-figured-out-how-to-... TL;DR what is harder vs. easier: paper ID forgery or digital ID forgery?
- tibbetts 10y ago
  It should get harder in general. But when people screw up the security of their design and then still blindly trust technology (like boarding passes), it is easier to pass a forgery.
- zigzigzag 10y ago
  Modern passports have an NFC chip in them which holds a digitally signed version of the passport data. Some of them are more sophisticated chips that are also uncloneable (but not all of them). Even the basic form of the chip prevents the creation of entirely fictional passports, assuming the integrity of the official passport issuing infrastructure. My understanding is that modern passport fraud therefore tends to be based on stealing passports on demand from someone who looks like the client, and/or forging passports that aren't protected by the chip.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - throwaway049 10y ago
    I second this. I have interviewed a substantial number of people in London who entered the UK on someone else's passport (sometimes rented not stolen). I also noted when travelling into the UK with someone who holds a UK Biometric Residence Permit that no use was made of the biometric data: The border agent just looked at the photo and at the person the old fashioned way.
gioele 10y ago
> The youngest member of the group, the lab’s technical director, is practically a child himself: Adolfo Kaminsky, age 18. I doubt that people referred to 18 years old men as "children" in 1944. In the '40s the average age for marriage was 23 for men and 21 for women.
- douche 10y ago
  Certainly not when it was as common as it was during WW2 for 16 and 17 year olds to lie about their age and enlist, or as things got down to the wire, take anybody who could fit in a stahlhem and fire a panzerfaust into the Volksturm. My granfather was referred to as "old man" or "gramps" when he got drafted into the navy towards the end of the war. He was 25.
- jakobegger 10y ago
  Is it actually common to refer to 18 year olds as children today? Or is that a US thing? I considered myself a grown up at that age; and it wouldn't occur to me to call someone who is older than 15 a kid.
  - icebraining 10y ago
    "College kid" is a common term in US media. In my (European) country, we call them "young" (as in, "Young invents device" or "Two youngs were yesterday found ..."), not children.
    - Symbiote 10y ago
      You probably use the word that translates as "youth". (Jugend, unge etc). It was normal in Britain, examples are youth hostel, youth centre, Fountain of Youth. But in the last 20 years or so, I think it's been used negatively so often ("drunken youths", "aggressive youths") that if you begin with "a group of youths..." most people will expect something bad. "A group of teenagers" or "a group of children" is neutral. As an adjective, it's still fine. "Youth football team" and so on is fine.
  - eyelidlessness 10y ago
brooklyndude 10y ago
A super powerful piece by the NYTs. Highly recommended. Done in interviews, video, animations, and shadow puppets.
clydethefrog 10y ago
Reminds me of the similar touching story of Chiune Sugihara. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/07/11/national/history/chiune-sugihara-man-conscience/ http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/07/11/national/history...
- tagawa 10y ago
  Similarly Sir Nicholas Winton. He kept his actions quiet and there was a moving TV programme 40 years later where they uncovered the list of children he saved: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=nicholas+winton+%22that%27s+life%22+1988&iax=1&ia=videos https://duckduckgo.com/?q=nicholas+winton+%22that%27s+life%2...
digitalsurgeon 10y ago
now we need some one to forge passports for Palestinians to help them flee the Israelis ..
- ceejayoz 10y ago
  It's fairly trivial to get out of Palestine. You can cross into Egypt with an ID card these days (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-13581141 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-13581141). Most don't want to leave, just like we generally don't want to leave our homes.
sylvinus 10y ago
You should watch the TEDx talk of his daughter: https://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_kaminsky https://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_kaminsky
fma 10y ago
On a similar note, there's Ho Feng-Shan. He worked at the consulate in Vienna and saved over 3,000 Jews by giving them visas to Shanghai so they can leave Austria and escape Nazi persecution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Feng-Shan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Feng-Shan

153 points by aaronbrethorst 10y ago

Hmm. Great story, although it gets somewhat dark towards the end. He may have started out as a noble forger saving children from the Nazis but it sounds like he kept going for decades and made false passports for whoever wanted them, no questions asked. "I can't deal with the details because all humans are equal" sounds a lot like post-hoc rationalization. Forging passports is all about dealing with tiny details. Understanding why your customers want false papers seems a lot larger than just a "detail". He wouldn't have forged papers to help the Nazi's I assume, but apparently after the war ended he somehow lost his discerning nature. I'm also 100% not buying his story about never doing it for profit. During WW2, sure, I can buy that. For the three decades he continued afterwards, when it was apparently close to full time work? He was a professional underground forger who made passports for whoever wanted them, no questions asked, even as the difficulty and sophistication of the needed equipment constantly rose. Hell yes he asked for money.

r2dnb 10y ago
I guess the millions of innocent people deported and killed by the nazis in front of him gave him a different perspective on what's a detail and what's not. Perspective probably different than green-pastures-based ones. I do not endorse breaking the law, and I wouldn't do it myself. But sometimes it is possible to understand where other people are coming from.
- zigzigzag 10y ago
  Sorry, that doesn't work for me. Lots of people came out of WW2 scarred but did not go on to become professional criminals. The article flat out says that some of the groups he worked with were rebel forces in Africa trying to overthrow governments, not exactly people who are famous for their cuddly nature.
  - r2dnb 10y ago
    >The article flat out says that some of the groups he worked with were rebel forces in Africa trying to overthrow governments, not exactly people who are famous for their cuddly nature. Granted, thanks for insisting I didn't realize that, missed that part. I think like you that his good intentions might have gone too far and turned into rationalized behaviour.
    - ceejayoz 10y ago
      That statement could cover anyone from Joseph Kony to Nelson Mandela.
  - Bootvis 10y ago
    The article doesn't state which rebel groups that used violence he supported. It could well be that the rebel groups that 'used violence in Africa' are the independence fighters in Algiers and the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. It could well be his work supported other rebel groups that didn't deserve any support but you can't conclude that from the article.
  - kchoudhu 10y ago
    > rebel forces in Africa The Battle of Algiers covers that particular mess, and it was straight out banned in France until 1971, five years after its release. It took that long for the French to admit that they were perhaps not the aggrieved party in that particular conflict.
  - rangibaby 10y ago
    I don't think "fake passports for rebels" would even warrant a mention on a list of "bad things that happened in Africa in the 20th century". Or the 21st century. They've already had a war that would've counted as a "World War" if it were in Europe or America. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Congo_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Congo_War
bisRepetita 10y ago
Why do you say "whoever wanted them"? >Mr. Kaminsky says he never accepted payment for forgeries, so that he could keep his motives clear and work only for causes he believed in. Many people give money or time to a cause they believe in, why not him? In any case, it would be nice if you back up you assertion with something.
- zigzigzag 10y ago
  Yet he also says he didn't care who he made forged documents for because everyone is the same. Those two positions are contradictory: either he was very discerning about his clients and they were not all the same, or the motives of his clients were details and he didn't pay attention to them. He claims both at once.
  - ceejayoz 10y ago
    > Yet he also says he didn't care who he made forged documents for because everyone is the same. I've read the article 3x now trying to find this statement. I can find stuff like he'd "work only for causes he believed in". I can find where he says "All humans are equal", but that hardly means what you make it out to mean (hell, the US Declaration of Independence says that; doesn't mean the US issues visas to ISIS). The need for fake documents to escape violence hardly ended with WWII. I owe my existence to a Soviet customs agent who accepted a bribe to seal my grandfather into a Czech cargo train.
    - zigzigzag 10y ago
      Here: “I saved lives because I can’t deal with unnecessary deaths — I just can’t,” he told me. “All humans are equal, whatever their origins, their beliefs, their skin color,” he later added. “There are no superiors, no inferiors. That is not acceptable for me.” He describes his work as "saving lives" in every case, as if every passport he ever made was for someone running from persecution, as if every case for 30+ years was as black and white as WW2. Yet the article also says "He went on to forge papers for people in practically every major conflict of the mid-20th century" and that he did it full time. That doesn't sound very discerning to me. Unless you're going to claim that 20th century conflicts were all a simple matter of good vs evil which could be immediately assessed. He can claim whatever he likes about his life and how he always chose the side of the angels in every single conflict - there is presumably no good way to check the veracity of his claims. But color me skeptical.
anotheryou 10y ago
Many survivors fight for good cause a life long. I met one who said today he'd try to become a hacker. I think it is very plausible and his underground contacts through which the later forging happened provided some trust. He would also see the amount of children he makes passports for and know their destination. He also might have forged easier to fake passports of neighboring countries, rather than EU/US ones. The other thing is: Who needs fake passports anyways? Armies certainly don't. That leaves refugees, terrorists and corrupt people. Terrorists and corrupt people probably are organized enough to have someone among themselves to do their passports. The bit of control about who gets his passports might have been good enough for him to decide it will do more good than harm.
- zigzigzag 10y ago
  From Wikipedia: Starting in 1963, he assisted various leftist movements from Latin America (Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Colombia, Peru, Uruguay, Chile, Mexico, Saint-Domingue, Haiti), Africa (Guinea-Bissau, Angola, South Africa) and from Portugal (then under Salazar's dictatorship) and Francoist Spain.[6] He trained a lot of people in forgery in order to support them in their struggle against dictatorships. I'm not sure who wrote that wiki page, but "leftist movement" in the context of mid-20th century Latin America means groups like FARC, which were very much armies and terrorists. The claim that this was done "against dictatorships" is very clever: it is technically true but disguises the fact that the groups he supported were simply trying to replace the current dictatorship with their own. Moreover, the moment you train lots of people, you obviously lose any ability to control how those skills are used. The more I read about this guy the more grey his story becomes.
  - wazoox 10y ago
    Yeah, fucking communists, how do they dare fight fascists? you make me sick, man.
  - bisRepetita 10y ago
    So you think it was overall a bad thing that he fought against dictatorship in Portugal, Spain, and many South American dictatorship? You think the world would be a better place with more dictatorships, Pinochet-style leadership? I understand you can dislike the FARC. I hope you have the same level of disdain for the Colombian paramilitaries and Government exactions. "According to several international human rights and governmental organizations, right-wing paramilitary groups have been responsible for at least 70 to 80% of political murders in Colombia per year, with the remainder committed by leftist guerrillas and government forces." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_paramilitarism_in_Colombia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_paramilitarism_in_C...
dmoo 10y ago
Just wondering what the ethical difference is between making false papers allowing anonymous travel and making encryption allowing anonymous communication?
goodcanadian 10y ago
"I can't deal with the details because all humans are equal" You appear to have misquoted. The word was not details; it was death: “I saved lives because I can’t deal with unnecessary deaths — I just can’t,” he told me. “All humans are equal, whatever their origins, their beliefs, their skin color,” he later added. “There are no superiors, no inferiors. That is not acceptable for me.”

nstj 10y ago

> “The smallest error and you send someone to prison or death,” he told me. “It’s a great responsibility. It’s heavy. It’s not at all a pleasure.” Serious dedication to the cause. A splendid story.

nefitty 10y ago

A lot of us work and live for acknowledgment. There are so few brave enough to work and live for effect.

qwrusz 10y ago

Related Question: apologies my background is not tech, does anyone have insight if "hacking" documents like this is easier or harder today as things move digital? Ignoring paper passports for a moment, as records move to digital over physical paper, will adding or removing names become easier or harder? Thinking of the guy who was able to fake a first class lounge airplane ticket: https://mic.com/articles/150812/this-guy-figured-out-how-to-hack-his-way-into-fancy-airport-lounges#.104VAW7IG https://mic.com/articles/150812/this-guy-figured-out-how-to-... TL;DR what is harder vs. easier: paper ID forgery or digital ID forgery?

tibbetts 10y ago
It should get harder in general. But when people screw up the security of their design and then still blindly trust technology (like boarding passes), it is easier to pass a forgery.
zigzigzag 10y ago
Modern passports have an NFC chip in them which holds a digitally signed version of the passport data. Some of them are more sophisticated chips that are also uncloneable (but not all of them). Even the basic form of the chip prevents the creation of entirely fictional passports, assuming the integrity of the official passport issuing infrastructure. My understanding is that modern passport fraud therefore tends to be based on stealing passports on demand from someone who looks like the client, and/or forging passports that aren't protected by the chip.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- throwaway049 10y ago
  I second this. I have interviewed a substantial number of people in London who entered the UK on someone else's passport (sometimes rented not stolen). I also noted when travelling into the UK with someone who holds a UK Biometric Residence Permit that no use was made of the biometric data: The border agent just looked at the photo and at the person the old fashioned way.

gioele 10y ago

> The youngest member of the group, the lab’s technical director, is practically a child himself: Adolfo Kaminsky, age 18. I doubt that people referred to 18 years old men as "children" in 1944. In the '40s the average age for marriage was 23 for men and 21 for women.

douche 10y ago
Certainly not when it was as common as it was during WW2 for 16 and 17 year olds to lie about their age and enlist, or as things got down to the wire, take anybody who could fit in a stahlhem and fire a panzerfaust into the Volksturm. My granfather was referred to as "old man" or "gramps" when he got drafted into the navy towards the end of the war. He was 25.
jakobegger 10y ago
Is it actually common to refer to 18 year olds as children today? Or is that a US thing? I considered myself a grown up at that age; and it wouldn't occur to me to call someone who is older than 15 a kid.
- icebraining 10y ago
  "College kid" is a common term in US media. In my (European) country, we call them "young" (as in, "Young invents device" or "Two youngs were yesterday found ..."), not children.
  - Symbiote 10y ago
    You probably use the word that translates as "youth". (Jugend, unge etc). It was normal in Britain, examples are youth hostel, youth centre, Fountain of Youth. But in the last 20 years or so, I think it's been used negatively so often ("drunken youths", "aggressive youths") that if you begin with "a group of youths..." most people will expect something bad. "A group of teenagers" or "a group of children" is neutral. As an adjective, it's still fine. "Youth football team" and so on is fine.
- eyelidlessness 10y ago

brooklyndude 10y ago

A super powerful piece by the NYTs. Highly recommended. Done in interviews, video, animations, and shadow puppets.

clydethefrog 10y ago

Reminds me of the similar touching story of Chiune Sugihara. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/07/11/national/history/chiune-sugihara-man-conscience/ http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/07/11/national/history...

tagawa 10y ago
Similarly Sir Nicholas Winton. He kept his actions quiet and there was a moving TV programme 40 years later where they uncovered the list of children he saved: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=nicholas+winton+%22that%27s+life%22+1988&iax=1&ia=videos https://duckduckgo.com/?q=nicholas+winton+%22that%27s+life%2...

digitalsurgeon 10y ago

now we need some one to forge passports for Palestinians to help them flee the Israelis ..

ceejayoz 10y ago
It's fairly trivial to get out of Palestine. You can cross into Egypt with an ID card these days (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-13581141 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-13581141). Most don't want to leave, just like we generally don't want to leave our homes.

sylvinus 10y ago

You should watch the TEDx talk of his daughter: https://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_kaminsky https://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_kaminsky

fma 10y ago

On a similar note, there's Ho Feng-Shan. He worked at the consulate in Vienna and saved over 3,000 Jews by giving them visas to Shanghai so they can leave Austria and escape Nazi persecution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Feng-Shan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Feng-Shan