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I guess the millions of innocent people deported and killed by the nazis in front of him gave him a different perspective on what's a detail and what's not. Perspective probably different than green-pastures-based ones.

I do not endorse breaking the law, and I wouldn't do it myself. But sometimes it is possible to understand where other people are coming from.

Sorry, that doesn't work for me. Lots of people came out of WW2 scarred but did not go on to become professional criminals. The article flat out says that some of the groups he worked with were rebel forces in Africa trying to overthrow governments, not exactly people who are famous for their cuddly nature.

>The article flat out says that some of the groups he worked with were rebel forces in Africa trying to overthrow governments, not exactly people who are famous for their cuddly nature.

Granted, thanks for insisting I didn't realize that, missed that part. I think like you that his good intentions might have gone too far and turned into rationalized behaviour.

That statement could cover anyone from Joseph Kony to Nelson Mandela.

The article doesn't state which rebel groups that used violence he supported. It could well be that the rebel groups that 'used violence in Africa' are the independence fighters in Algiers and the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. It could well be his work supported other rebel groups that didn't deserve any support but you can't conclude that from the article.

> rebel forces in Africa

The Battle of Algiers covers that particular mess, and it was straight out banned in France until 1971, five years after its release. It took that long for the French to admit that they were perhaps not the aggrieved party in that particular conflict.

I don't think "fake passports for rebels" would even warrant a mention on a list of "bad things that happened in Africa in the 20th century". Or the 21st century. They've already had a war that would've counted as a "World War" if it were in Europe or America. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Congo_War

"I can't deal with the details because all humans are equal"

You appear to have misquoted. The word was not details; it was death:

“I saved lives because I can’t deal with unnecessary deaths — I just can’t,” he told me. “All humans are equal, whatever their origins, their beliefs, their skin color,” he later added. “There are no superiors, no inferiors. That is not acceptable for me.”

Why do you say "whoever wanted them"?

>Mr. Kaminsky says he never accepted payment for forgeries, so that he could keep his motives clear and work only for causes he believed in.

Many people give money or time to a cause they believe in, why not him? In any case, it would be nice if you back up you assertion with something.

Yet he also says he didn't care who he made forged documents for because everyone is the same. Those two positions are contradictory: either he was very discerning about his clients and they were not all the same, or the motives of his clients were details and he didn't pay attention to them. He claims both at once.

> Yet he also says he didn't care who he made forged documents for because everyone is the same.

I've read the article 3x now trying to find this statement.

I can find stuff like he'd "work only for causes he believed in". I can find where he says "All humans are equal", but that hardly means what you make it out to mean (hell, the US Declaration of Independence says that; doesn't mean the US issues visas to ISIS).

The need for fake documents to escape violence hardly ended with WWII. I owe my existence to a Soviet customs agent who accepted a bribe to seal my grandfather into a Czech cargo train.

Here:

“I saved lives because I can’t deal with unnecessary deaths — I just can’t,” he told me. “All humans are equal, whatever their origins, their beliefs, their skin color,” he later added. “There are no superiors, no inferiors. That is not acceptable for me.”

He describes his work as "saving lives" in every case, as if every passport he ever made was for someone running from persecution, as if every case for 30+ years was as black and white as WW2.

Yet the article also says "He went on to forge papers for people in practically every major conflict of the mid-20th century" and that he did it full time. That doesn't sound very discerning to me. Unless you're going to claim that 20th century conflicts were all a simple matter of good vs evil which could be immediately assessed.

He can claim whatever he likes about his life and how he always chose the side of the angels in every single conflict - there is presumably no good way to check the veracity of his claims. But color me skeptical.

Even a war between two horrible groups (think Assad vs. ISIS) has innocent bystanders caught up in it wanting to escape. You're reading enormous amounts of negativity into a small amount of info that provides little evidence to support it.

He endorses many causes, e.g the Algerian resistance. You may disagree with the cause, but i am not sure how you can deduct he did it it for money and not conviction. And why embracing a cause necessarily means having to know everything about the people who are part of it?

More info about his life and causes in the presentation of the book here:

https://doppelhouse.com/adolfo-kaminsky-a-forgers-life/

A lot of people seem to be struggling with this notion that he did it for money, perhaps because he claims he didn't. But that's not consistent with the rest of the article, so why should he be immediately believed? Just because it's a nice story?

From the article:

He had two kids soon after World War II, but couldn’t tell them or his ex-wife about his underground work, so they didn’t know why he rarely visited. Girlfriends assumed he was absent because he’d been cheating.

His business took him away from home so frequently that he was unable to maintain stable relationships at all until he quit for good. We can deduce that forging documents was therefore not a rare occurrence - it was happening all the time. It also seems to have involved a lot of travel, which in the years he was active was nowhere near as cheap as today.

He estimates that in 1967 alone, he supplied forged papers to people in 15 countries.

Not to 15 people, but people in 15 countries. That does not sound like a small operation.

He went on to forge papers for people in practically every major conflict of the mid-20th century.

Forging passports that could pass muster around the world for decades on end is not something one does as a hobby. It takes significant time and presumably in the later stages serious lab equipment. Given his post-forging career as a photographer - not the most lucrative of trades - where did he get the money to fund his forging activities if not by charging for it?

It is difficult for me to reconcile this self-proclaimed image Kaminsky projects of a hobbyist who neutrally saves lives out of the goodness of his heart, with all the other evidence in the article that he was both highly political and running an international criminal operation up until the point he got scared of being caught.

The only evidence we have of his noble intentions are what he says they were. And just in case we think he's a humble and modest person, from the book website:

“My life as a forger is one long, uninterrupted resistance… against inequality, segregation, racism, injustice, fascism and dictatorships.”

>A lot of people seem to be struggling with this notion that he did it for money

Who? I wonder if you struggle that people can do many things without charging for it. .If you good at your trade as a forgerer, and you work with organization like the Algerian Resistance, and -if- expensive equipment was needed as you claim without backing it up, I could see an oragnization funding it.

And he would keep doing it for free, not making money out of it. Out of conviction.

>It is difficult for me to reconcile [...]

A lot of people who fight politically, especially those outside the limelight, do it because they believe this is the right thing to do for others. I don't recall reading "neutrally", only causes he believes in.

If his success was dependent upon the goodwill of some mysterious organisation, why not give them a share of the credit too, even if just anonymously?

I think maybe the HN community is so heavily open source/software oriented that it's hard to realise that most complex, long term efforts in the world do need funding, even if they aren't full time. Even most artists need some sort of funding, hence why his photography was commercial. Passports, even quite old passports, have all sorts of anti-forging techniques that take time to overcome. I think the book mentions the invention of watermarking ... and that's really just the start. Here's an article on US Passports:

http://gizmodo.com/your-passports-complex-security-tech-expl...

Kaminsky also forged French currency, which is also rather non-trivial and has been so for a long time. This isn't open source where you can buy a thousand dollars worth of equipment and the rest is just your free time, donated to the world. Obtaining the specialised equipment, building up a network capable of securely and anonymously routing forged documents across the world, training new generations of forgers - all this takes a lot of time and effort.

Many survivors fight for good cause a life long. I met one who said today he'd try to become a hacker.

I think it is very plausible and his underground contacts through which the later forging happened provided some trust. He would also see the amount of children he makes passports for and know their destination. He also might have forged easier to fake passports of neighboring countries, rather than EU/US ones.

The other thing is: Who needs fake passports anyways? Armies certainly don't. That leaves refugees, terrorists and corrupt people. Terrorists and corrupt people probably are organized enough to have someone among themselves to do their passports. The bit of control about who gets his passports might have been good enough for him to decide it will do more good than harm.

From Wikipedia:

Starting in 1963, he assisted various leftist movements from Latin America (Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Colombia, Peru, Uruguay, Chile, Mexico, Saint-Domingue, Haiti), Africa (Guinea-Bissau, Angola, South Africa) and from Portugal (then under Salazar's dictatorship) and Francoist Spain.[6] He trained a lot of people in forgery in order to support them in their struggle against dictatorships.

I'm not sure who wrote that wiki page, but "leftist movement" in the context of mid-20th century Latin America means groups like FARC, which were very much armies and terrorists. The claim that this was done "against dictatorships" is very clever: it is technically true but disguises the fact that the groups he supported were simply trying to replace the current dictatorship with their own.

Moreover, the moment you train lots of people, you obviously lose any ability to control how those skills are used.

The more I read about this guy the more grey his story becomes.

Yeah, fucking communists, how do they dare fight fascists? you make me sick, man.

So you think it was overall a bad thing that he fought against dictatorship in Portugal, Spain, and many South American dictatorship? You think the world would be a better place with more dictatorships, Pinochet-style leadership?

I understand you can dislike the FARC. I hope you have the same level of disdain for the Colombian paramilitaries and Government exactions.

"According to several international human rights and governmental organizations, right-wing paramilitary groups have been responsible for at least 70 to 80% of political murders in Colombia per year, with the remainder committed by leftist guerrillas and government forces." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_paramilitarism_in_C...

What? Replacing one dictatorship with another doesn't solve any problems at all - it's literally not a fight worth supporting. How could anyone rationalise otherwise?

Tell me more about the dictatorships replacing Salazar and Franco.

Honestly, I don't think you're judging the man fairly. You point out everything he could possibly have done wrong and completely ignore his good deeds.

Just wondering what the ethical difference is between making false papers allowing anonymous travel and making encryption allowing anonymous communication?