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Adolfo Kaminsky, French Resistance forger who saved thousands during the Holocaust, dies at 97
(JTA) — Adolfo Kaminsky, the French-Jewish photographer, forger, smuggler and resistance fighter who saved thousands of people during the Holocaust as part of the French underground, died at 97 in his home in Paris on Monday.
Kaminsky’s improbable and heroic story was detailed in a book by his daughter, written in his voice, and in “The Forger,” a New York Times documentary released in 2016.
The child of Russian Jews who fled pogroms, Kaminsky was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1925, but moved with his family to France in the early 1930s. As a teenager, he began work in a factory but lost his job when the Nazis occupied the country in 1940 and Jews were dismissed from many industries.
The new job he ultimately found, in a dyer’s shop and dairy factory, would be pivotal not only to his own survival but to that of thousands of Jews in France during the Holocaust.
After a brief stint in a concentration camp, the Kaminskys were released thanks to their Argentine passports. Concerned that their freedom would not last, his father urged him to secure false papers concealing their Jewish identity. Kaminsky did so and became adept at creating such papers himself, using the skills and chemistry knowledge gained in the dyer’s shop to remove obviously Jewish names from identity documents.
His work led him to be recruited by the French Resistance, and he stepped up his involvement after his mother was killed on her way back to Paris after warning his brother of an impending arrest. Tasked with producing false documents, he once fabricated more than 1,000 for children in just three days, forcing himself not to sleep in the process.
“In one hour I can make 30 blank documents. If I sleep for an hour 30 people will die,” Kaminsky said in the 2016 documentary.
Over the course of the war, he produced enough documents to save the lives of 14,000 Jews.
“I saved lives because I can’t deal with unnecessary deaths — I just can’t,” he said. “All humans are equal, whatever their origins, their beliefs, their skin color. There are no superiors, no inferiors. That is not acceptable for me.”
His forgeries didn’t end with the liberation of France or the Nazis’ surrender. Instead, he continued to create fake documents for the Bricha movement, which smuggled displaced Jews to Mandatory Palestine, and supported the Irgun and Lehi, Jewish militias working for Israeli independence.
In the decades to follow, Kaminsky put his skills to work for the Algerian National Liberation Front as it threw off the yoke of French colonialism in the 1960s, as well as a variety of other left-wing revolutionary movements across Latin America and Europe. He finally gave up the political causes in the 1970s, settling in Algiers and later moving back to France where he worked full-time as a photographer.
Kaminsky is survived by his wife, two daughters, two sons and nine grandchildren.
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Israel Pounds Lebanon with Heaviest Airstrikes of the War as Hezbollah Pauses Attacks
Rescuers work at the site of an Israeli strike in Beirut, Lebanon, April 8, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
Israel carried out its heaviest strikes on Lebanon since the conflict with Hezbollah broke out last month, even as the Iran-aligned group paused attacks on northern Israel and Israeli troops in Lebanon under a two-week US-Iran ceasefire.
Consecutive explosions shook Beirut, sending smoke billowing across the capital, as Israel’s military said it had launched the largest coordinated strike of the war. More than 100 Hezbollah command centers and military sites were targeted in Beirut, the Bekaa Valley and southern Lebanon, it said.
The strikes killed dozens and wounded hundreds, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. In Beirut, Reuters reporters saw people on motorcycles picking up wounded and transporting them to hospitals because there were not enough ambulances to get them in time. A group of firefighters worked to put out flames in a car park after one strike left more than a dozen cars scorched and mangled.
The head of Lebanon’s syndicate of doctors, Elias Chlela, called in a written statement for “all physicians from all specialties” to head to any hospital they could to offer help. One of Beirut’s biggest hospitals said it was in need of donations of all blood types.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said overnight that the ceasefire suspending the six-week-old US-Israeli war against Iran did not apply to Lebanon, and the Israeli military said operations against Hezbollah there would continue.
That position contradicted comments by Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, a key intermediary in the US-Iran ceasefire talks, who had said the truce would include Lebanon.
Lebanon’s state news agency NNA had reported continued Israeli strikes across southern Lebanon earlier in the day, including artillery shelling and a dawn airstrike on a building near a hospital that killed four people. An Israeli strike on the southern city of Sidon killed eight people and wounded 22 others, Lebanon’s health ministry said.
Hezbollah stopped attacking Israeli targets early on Wednesday, three Lebanese sources close to the group told Reuters. The group’s last public statement on its military activity was posted at 1 a.m. (2200 GMT Tuesday), saying it had targeted Israeli troops inside Lebanon on Tuesday evening.
The group is likely to issue a statement outlining its formal position on the ceasefire and on Netanyahu’s assertion that Lebanon is not included, the three Lebanese sources said.
French President Emmanuel Macron said the situation in Lebanon, a former French protectorate, remained critical and called for Lebanon to be included in the deal. Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, welcoming the US-Iran ceasefire, said Beirut would continue its efforts to ensure that Lebanon was included in any lasting regional peace agreement.
“Hezbollah was informed that it is part of the ceasefire – so we abided by it, but Israel as usual has violated it and committed massacres all across Lebanon,” senior Hezbollah lawmaker Ibrahim al-Moussawi told Reuters.
‘LEBANON CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE’
Most of Wednesday’s strikes were in civilian-populated areas, Israel’s military said. Hours before the strike, the military had issued warnings for some areas of southern Beirut and southern Lebanon. No such warning was given for central Beirut, which was also hit.
Following the strikes, Israeli military spokesperson Avichay Adraee claimed on X that Hezbollah had moved out of its traditional Shi’ite stronghold in southern Beirut’s Dahiyeh neighbourhood to religiously mixed areas of the city, including in the north.
Addressing Hezbollah, he said, Israel’s military will “pursue you and act with great force against you wherever you are”.
More than 1,500 people have been killed in Israel’s air and ground campaign across Lebanon, including more than 130 children and more than 100 women, since March 2 when Hezbollah started firing rockets at Israel in solidarity with Tehran.
Israel has issued evacuation orders covering around 15 percent of Lebanese territory since then, mostly in the south and in suburbs south of Beirut. More than 1.2 million people have been displaced, according to Lebanese authorities.
Israel has also pledged to occupy southern Lebanon up to the Litani River as part of a “security zone” it says is intended to protect its northern residents.
“Hopefully a ceasefire will be reached,” said Ahmed Harm, a 54-year-old man displaced from Beirut’s southern suburbs. “Lebanon can’t take it anymore. The country is collapsing economically, and everything is collapsing.”
Outside a school sheltering displaced people in Sidon, pillows and blankets were piled onto cars as some families held out hope of returning home soon. On an astroturf football field, one family had packed plastic bags with clothes, pots and pans, towels, sheets and blankets.
“We’re just waiting for the official decision from the top, so we can go back,” said Samar al-Saibany, who was displaced from a village in the south.
Local mayor Mustafa al-Zein said more than 28,000 people were sheltering in the area as of Tuesday night. He cautioned residents against trying to return before an official signal.
“In the south, give someone a signal to return, and he’ll return,” Zein said.
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‘A Lot of Work to Do’ to Reopen Strait of Hormuz, UK’s Starmer Says on Gulf Trip
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and US President Donald Trump (not pictured) hold a bilateral meeting at Trump Turnberry golf course in Turnberry, Scotland, Britain, July 28, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Wednesday there was still a lot of work to do to reopen the Strait of Hormuz following the US-Iran ceasefire, speaking during a visit to the Gulf.
Starmer will hold talks with regional leaders during the visit, which had been planned before the ceasefire was announced.
“We now … have a ceasefire, but there’s a lot of work to do, as you will appreciate, a lot of work to make sure that that ceasefire becomes permanent and brings about the peace that we all want to see,” he said in a speech to military personnel at a base in Saudi Arabia.
“But also a lot of work to do in relation to the Strait of Hormuz, which has an impact everywhere across the world.”
Starmer, who has been heavily criticized by US President Donald Trump for failing to support the US and Israeli strikes on Iran, has hosted multinational meetings on how allies could support the reopening of the key strait that is fundamental to oil and gas trade.
“It’s our job to make sure that the Strait is open, that we’re able to get the energy that the world needs out and stabilize the prices back in the United Kingdom,” Starmer told reporters.
British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper also spoke to her US counterpart, Marco Rubio, on Tuesday, about diplomatic measures to secure the reopening of the Strait, including last week’s UK-led meeting that brought together over 40 countries to discuss the issue.
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Netanyahu Backs US–Iran Ceasefire, Says Deal Excludes Lebanon
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu participates in the state memorial ceremony for the fallen of the Iron Swords War on Mount Herzl, Jerusalem on Oct. 16, 2025. Photo: Alex Kolomoisky/POOL/Pool via REUTERS
i24 News – The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a statement in the hours following the ceasefire agreement, announcing Israel’s support for the US-brokered two-week truce with Iran while clarifying that it does not extend to Lebanon.
In the statement, Netanyahu’s office said Israel backs the decision by US President Trump to suspend strikes against Iran for two weeks, on the condition that Tehran immediately reopens the Strait of Hormuz and halts all attacks against the United States, Israel, and countries in the region.
The statement added that Israel supports Washington’s broader objective of ensuring Iran no longer poses a nuclear, missile, or terrorism-related threat to regional and global security. According to the Prime Minister’s Office, the United States has reassured Israel that these goals will remain central in the upcoming negotiations.
“The United States has told Israel that it is committed to achieving these goals,” the statement said, noting that these priorities are shared by the US, Israel, and their regional allies.
It also stressed that the ceasefire does not apply to Lebanon, stating explicitly that “the two-week ceasefire does not include Lebanon.”
In the hours following the announcement, Iran launched additional missile strikes targeting Israel and several Gulf states before tensions appeared to ease toward morning.