Adolfo Kaminsky The Forger of Paris: Authorized Biography. New and Expanded Edition

by Sarah Kaminsky, Deborah Dash Moore (Contributor), Paul Salmona (Contributor)

298 pages, Hardcover

Published April 29, 2025

About the author

Sarah Kaminsky is an actress, screenwriter and author born in Algeria. She was three years old when she immigrated to France with her father Adolfo Kaminsky, two brothers and her mother Leïla, a Tuareg Algerian, law student, and anti-colonial activist whose father was a progressive imam. Sarah Kaminsky’s first book is the best-selling biography of her father, Adolfo Kaminsky, published by Éditions Calmann-Lévy in 2009 and now translated into eight languages. She has a son and lives in Paris.

Reviews

[Angie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first portion that covers Kaminsky's time as a forger during WWII read more like a thriller to me than a memoir and was quite captivating. Having began a clandestine lifestyle at the young age of 17yo and maintained if for 30 years, I found his reason for hanging up his life as a forger interesting and puzzling (I won't spoil it!). I am impressed with his dedication to the lives and freedom of others. To guard himself from becoming a mercenary, he kept a strict no payment policy throughout his forgery endeavors. As a long-time, deeply committed humanitarian with great sacrifice, I find it interesting that he was a secularist. I wonder at what all his deepest motivations were. He chased not after fame, money, or power...yet he was deeply concerned about others to dedicate and sacrifice so much to thousands of strangers for so long. He understood much, witnessed much, that we know. "For thirty years, in my own way and with the only weapons at my disposal - technical knowledge, ingenuity and unshakable utopian ideals - I had fought against a reality that was too harrowing to observe or suffer without doing anything about it. Thanks to my conviction that I had the power to alter the course of things, that there was a better world to be made and that I could make a contribution. A world in which no one would need a forger. It's still my dream." p198. How does one value life and freedom to such great depths without also being motivated by the broader picture of human existence? Some things we simply cannot wrap our minds around, but I love how God uses people throughout history for His good purpose, regardless if we/they recognize such or not.

ETA: The author's reason for deciding to write this biography of her father in first person was interesting to me, and the results are effective. The shift into an interview format part-way through was a good visual transition to a more traditional memoir reading for the remainder of the book. I appreciate that such format was not obtrusive to the flow as one might anticipate. Although I got lost in some of the details, being unfamiliar with some people, places, and events, I found the book still worth reading. And those that know all those things certainly would not experience the "I-have-no-idea-what-you-are-talking-about" moments that I had. lol! That said, the footnotes were often helpful and I personally could have used more of those. :)