Adolfo Kaminsky (or Adolphe; 1 October 1925 – 9 January 2023) was an Argentine-born member of the French Resistance, specializing in the forgery of identity documents (IDs), and photographer.
He forged papers for thirty years for different activist groups, mainly national liberation fronts, without ever requiring payment.
At first he watched the railway station at Vire from where railcars of the Todt Organization, loaded with material for the Atlantic Wall, transited.
[6] Thanks to support from the Consul of Argentina, which had broken diplomatic relations with Nazi Germany under pressure from the United States, they were freed on 22 December 1943,[7] and moved on to Paris.
[5] Adolfo then worked in an underground lab in Paris (17, rue des St Pères) where he spent the rest of World War II forging identity papers for Jews and people sought by the Nazis.
Kaminsky also quickly learned photogravure under a false pretext, and set up a new lab in order to create "real-false" documents.
He was awarded the Médaille de la Résistance, and was engaged by the French military secret services, who entrusted him with making false IDs for spies sent behind enemy lines in order to investigate and detect the location of concentration camps before their dismantlement by the Nazis.
He thereafter continued to forge papers for various groups, working first with the National Liberation Front of Algeria (FLN) and French draft dodgers by setting up a clandestine lab in Paris.
"[11] Starting in 1963, he assisted various leftist movements from Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti, Mexico, Nicaragua, Perú, Uruguay, Venezuela); Africa (Angola, Guinea-Bissau, South Africa) and from Portugal (then under Salazar's dictatorship) and Francoist Spain.
Kaminsky also supported the Greeks struggling against the regime of the Colonels, and made false ID papers for American draft dodgers during the Vietnam War.
In 1968, he made a false ID for Daniel Cohn-Bendit to allow him to speak at a meeting—he would later say: "It was certainly the least useful [forgery], but it was a way of showing that there is nothing more porous than borders and that ideas transcend them".
Kaminsky subsequently lived for ten years in Algiers, married a Tuareg woman, and had five children, including hip-hop singer Rocé.