Stories of Kindness from Around the World

Adolfo Kaminsky: How he and his three-person team saved more than 14,000 Jews and others during World War ll.

It’s 1944 in Nazi occupied Paris. Adolfo, just-18-years-old and three of his friends spend night and day in a small apartment.

They run a secret lab to make false documents to save men, women and children from being sent to concentration camps for execution.

If they get caught, they will be taken out on the street and shot, as a warning to anyone else who might help the Jews.

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This doesn’t stop Adolfo and his tiny team. Expert forgers, they create documents changing the identities of Jews and others the Nazis are seeking.

Adolfo Kaminsky's Fake ID's
Adolfo Kaminsky's fake ID's
Photo: haitiholocaustsurvivors.wordpress.com
And Adolfo knows how to erase the blue ink identifying Jews on official documents, which means they can save even more lives.

Yet even as they work, each day trains packed with victims of the Nazis and their sympathizers, head to the concentration camps.

Every hour Adolfo and his tiny team work, he estimates they save 30-lives, and they work almost around the clock, often sleeping in their work spaces.

By war’s end, they have saved an estimated 14,000 Jews and many other people as well.

Today, some of those people still live, as do thousands of their children and grandchildren, all of whom owe this little team Adolfo headed, a huge debt of gratitude.






Editor's Note: 92- year-old Adolfo was recently interviewed on “60-Minutes,” a popular U.S TV show as was his daughter Sarah, in addition to a woman who was part of his forging operation, and two survivors saved by their forged documents. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-a-wwii-era-forger.../ (run-time 13-minutes, 10-seconds).

To learn more https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolfo_Kaminsky or read Sarah Kaminsky’s 2016 book: “Adolfo Kaminsky: A Forger’s Life”