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Overlooked Important WWII Figures from History

Khalid Elhassan October 20, 2019 31 min

21. Freedom’s Forger

Adolfo Kaminsky in old age. Tienda Gourmet

By the time the Germans were kicked out of France, Adolfo Kaminsky had produced fake documents that helped save over 14,000 Jewish men, women, and children, from the horrors of the Holocaust. After the war, he worked as a professional photographer. However, he also continued his clandestine work as a master forger, lending his talents to disadvantaged peoples and liberation causes around the world.

Adolfo created documents for thousands of freedom fighters, such as the Algerian FLN, refugees, exiles, and pacifists. As the Jerusalem Post summed his career: “He grew to be a humanist forger, a utopian outlaw, the Robin Hood of false papers, preparing passports and identity cards for the world’s oppressed.“

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.