24. The Young Forger
French teenager Adolfo Kaminsky found himself under Nazi occupation after France was defeated in 1940. He was a precocious and self-taught gifted chemist, which he combined with a talent for forgery to make himself perhaps Europe’s best underground forger. He specialized in identity papers and forged documents that helped save the lives of thousands of Jews.
Adolfo was born in 1925 to Russian Jewish parents who had emigrated to Argentina, before the family relocated to France in 1932. To help support his family, Kaminsky dropped out of school at age 13 and got a job working for a dry cleaner. His work entailed the use of various compounds, which led to a familiarity with, and subsequent passion for, chemistry.