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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 discern

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.
  - ceejayoz 10y ago
    Even a war between two horrible groups (think Assad vs. ISIS) has innocent bystanders caught up in it wanting to escape. You're reading enormous amounts of negativity into a small amount of info that provides little evidence to support it.
bisRepetita 10y ago
He endorses many causes, e.g the Algerian resistance. You may disagree with the cause, but i am not sure how you can deduct he did it it for money and not conviction. And why embracing a cause necessarily means having to know everything about the people who are part of it? More info about his life and causes in the presentation of the book here: https://doppelhouse.com/adolfo-kaminsky-a-forgers-life/ https://doppelhouse.com/adolfo-kaminsky-a-forgers-life/
- zigzigzag 10y ago
  A lot of people seem to be struggling with this notion that he did it for money, perhaps because he claims he didn't. But that's not consistent with the rest of the article, so why should he be immediately believed? Just because it's a nice story? From the article: He had two kids soon after World War II, but couldn’t tell them or his ex-wife about his underground work, so they didn’t know why he rarely visited. Girlfriends assumed he was absent because he’d been cheating. His business took him away from home so frequently that he was unable to maintain stable relationships at all until he quit for good. We can deduce that forging documents was therefore not a rare occurrence - it was happening all the time. It also seems to have involved a lot of travel, which in the years he was active was nowhere near as cheap as today. He estimates that in 1967 alone, he supplied forged papers to people in 15 countries. Not to 15 people, but people in 15 countries. That does not sound like a small operation. He went on to forge papers for people in practically every major conflict of the mid-20th century. Forging passports that could pass muster around the world for decades on end is not something one does as a hobby. It takes significant time and presumably in the later stages serious lab equipment. Given his post-forging career as a photographer - not the most lucrative of trades - where did he get the money to fund his forging activities if not by charging for it? It is difficult for me to reconcile this self-proclaimed image Kaminsky projects of a hobbyist who neutrally saves lives out of the goodness of his heart, with all the other evidence in the article that he was both highly political and running an international criminal operation up until the point he got scared of being caught. The only evidence we have of his noble intentions are what he says they were. And just in case we think he's a humble and modest person, from the book website: “My life as a forger is one long, uninterrupted resistance… against inequality, segregation, racism, injustice, fascism and dictatorships.”

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.
- ceejayoz 10y ago
  Even a war between two horrible groups (think Assad vs. ISIS) has innocent bystanders caught up in it wanting to escape. You're reading enormous amounts of negativity into a small amount of info that provides little evidence to support it.

bisRepetita 10y ago

He endorses many causes, e.g the Algerian resistance. You may disagree with the cause, but i am not sure how you can deduct he did it it for money and not conviction. And why embracing a cause necessarily means having to know everything about the people who are part of it? More info about his life and causes in the presentation of the book here: https://doppelhouse.com/adolfo-kaminsky-a-forgers-life/ https://doppelhouse.com/adolfo-kaminsky-a-forgers-life/

zigzigzag 10y ago
A lot of people seem to be struggling with this notion that he did it for money, perhaps because he claims he didn't. But that's not consistent with the rest of the article, so why should he be immediately believed? Just because it's a nice story? From the article: He had two kids soon after World War II, but couldn’t tell them or his ex-wife about his underground work, so they didn’t know why he rarely visited. Girlfriends assumed he was absent because he’d been cheating. His business took him away from home so frequently that he was unable to maintain stable relationships at all until he quit for good. We can deduce that forging documents was therefore not a rare occurrence - it was happening all the time. It also seems to have involved a lot of travel, which in the years he was active was nowhere near as cheap as today. He estimates that in 1967 alone, he supplied forged papers to people in 15 countries. Not to 15 people, but people in 15 countries. That does not sound like a small operation. He went on to forge papers for people in practically every major conflict of the mid-20th century. Forging passports that could pass muster around the world for decades on end is not something one does as a hobby. It takes significant time and presumably in the later stages serious lab equipment. Given his post-forging career as a photographer - not the most lucrative of trades - where did he get the money to fund his forging activities if not by charging for it? It is difficult for me to reconcile this self-proclaimed image Kaminsky projects of a hobbyist who neutrally saves lives out of the goodness of his heart, with all the other evidence in the article that he was both highly political and running an international criminal operation up until the point he got scared of being caught. The only evidence we have of his noble intentions are what he says they were. And just in case we think he's a humble and modest person, from the book website: “My life as a forger is one long, uninterrupted resistance… against inequality, segregation, racism, injustice, fascism and dictatorships.”