22. Becoming A Resistance Forger
In 1943, Adolfo Kaminsky’s family was rounded up and interned in a holding camp, preparatory to deportation to Auschwitz. They were only spared at the last minute, due to intervention from the Argentinean consul. In the meantime, Adolfo joined the French Resistance at age 16. Sent by his father to pick up forged identity papers from a Resistance cell, he discovered that they faced difficulties with a particular dye. The precocious chemist gave them a solution off the top of his head that immediately solved their problem.
Impressed, the Resistance recruited him and put him to work in an underground laboratory in Paris. There, he spent the rest of the war forging identity papers for those on the run from the Nazis and in need of fake ID, particularly Jews.