I am the daughter of a forger, not just any forger ... When you hear the word “forger,” you often think “mercenary.” You think “forged currency,” “forged pictures.” My father is no such man. For 30 years of his life, he forged papers -- never for himself, always for other people, and to helpf the persecuted and the oppressed. Let me introduce him. Here is my father at age 19. It all began for him during World War II, when, aged 17, he found himself thrust into a forged documents workshop. He quickly became the forged paper expert of the Resistance. And this story became special as after the Liberation, he went on forging papers until the ’70s.
我是一个赝造者的女儿 不是一般的赝造者 当听到“赝造”这个词 你会想到“唯利是图” 会想到“赝币” “赝画” 我父亲不是这样的人 曾经有30年 他从事文件伪造工作 从来不为自己 只为别人 为了受迫害和压迫的人 请允许我介绍他 这是我父亲19岁的时候 一切开始于二战期间 年仅17岁的他 被带进一个伪造文件的作坊 很快他成为抵抗运动一方的文件伪造专家 这不是个平庸的故事 解放后他一直 伪造文件直到70年代
When I was a child, I knew nothing about this, of course. This is me, in the middle, making faces. I grew up in the Paris suburbs and I was the youngest of three children. I had a "normal" dad like everybody else, apart from the fact he was 30 years older than ... well, he was basically old enoug to be my grandfather. Anyway, he was a photographer and a street educator, and he always taught us to strictly obey the laws. And, of course, he never talked about his past life when he was a forger.
当我还是孩子的时候 当然什么都不懂 中间做鬼脸那个就是我 我在巴黎郊区长大 是三个孩子里最小的 我以为他像其他爸爸一样“平凡” 除了他(比妈妈)大30岁 差不多可以做我祖父了 他是一个摄影师 一个街头教育者 他总是教育我们要遵纪守法 当然他从没透露过他的过去 关于他是赝造者的事
But there was an episode, I will tell you about, that might have tipped me off. I was in high school and got a bad grade, a rare event for me, so I decided to hide it from my parents. And to do that, I thought I would forge their signature. I started working on my mother’s signature, because my father’s one is absolutely impossible to forge. So, I got working, I took some sheets of paper and started practicing, practicing, practicing, until I reached what I thought was a steady hand, and went into action. Later, while checking my school bag, my mother found my assignment and saw the signature was forged. She yelled at me like never before. I went to hide in my bedroom, under the blankets, and then I waited for my father to come back from work with, one could say, much apprehension. I heard him come in. I remained under the blankets He entered my room, sat on the corner of the bed, and he was silent, so I pulled the blanket from my head, and when he saw me, he started laughing. He was laughing so hard, he could not stop, holding my assignment. Then he said, “Really, Sarah, you could have worked harder! It’s too small!” Indeed, it's rather small.
但是 下面我要讲一件事 这件事差点让我起疑 我上高中时 有一次考得非常差 那不是我的常态发挥 所以我决定藏起来不让父母知道 为此我着手伪造他们的签名 我开始研究我母亲的签名 因为我父亲的绝对没法伪造 于是我掏出几张纸 开始练习 练习 练习 直到我觉得有把握了 就开始行动 后来 在检查我书包的时候 我母亲翻出我的作业 立刻看到了伪造的签名 她史无前例地大声责备我 我躲到房里 藏在毯子底下 等着父亲下班回家 很是提心吊胆 我听见他进来 但仍裹在毯子里 他进了屋 坐在床角 一声不吭 我就拉开毯子 他看着我 开始大笑 他笑得停不下来 手里还拿着我的作业 他说 “莎拉 你还不够努力 没发现签得太小了吗?” 确实是挺小的
I was born in Algeria. There I would hear people say my father was a “moudjahid” and that means "fighter." Later on, in France, I loved eavesdroppin on grownups’ conversations, and I would hear all sorts of stories about my father’s former life, especially that he had “done” World War II, that he had "done" the Algerian war. In my head, I thought that “doing” a war meant being a soldier. But knowing my father, and how was a non-violent keen pacifist, I found it very hard to picture him with a helmet and gun. And indeed, I was very far from the mark.
我出生于阿尔及利亚 在那里我听见别人说我父亲是个"moudjahid" 意思是“斗士” 后来在法国 我喜欢偷听大人们讲话 我听到各种各样的关于我父亲过去的故事 特别是他“参与”二战 及阿尔及利亚战争的事 在我的认知里参与战争就是成为士兵 但我父亲一直宣称他是非暴力的和平主义者 很难想象他戴着头盔扛着枪 确实 我完全猜错了
One day, while my father was working on a file for us to obtain French nationality, I happened to see some documents. These are real! These are mine, I was born an Argentinean. But the document I happened to see, that would help us build a case for the authorities, was a document from the army thanking my father for his work on behalf of the secret services. And then, suddenly, I went "wow!" My father, a secret agent? It was very James Bond. I wanted to ask him questions, which he didn’t answer. And later, I told myself that one day I would have to question him. By then I was a mother of a little boy and thought it was now time, that he absolutely had to talk to us. I had just become a mother and he was celebrating his 77th birthday, and suddenly I was very, very afraid. I feared he'd go and take his silences with him, and take his secrets with him. I managed to convince him that it was important for us, but possibly also for other people that he shared his story. And so he did and I made a book of it, from which I will read you some excerpts later.
有天 我父亲在做一份证件 为了给我们申请法国国籍 我正好看见一些文件 引起了我的注意 这些都是真的 这些是我的 我成了阿根廷人 但我看到的那份 足够当局做立案证据的文件 是一份来自军方 代表特情处 向我父亲致谢的文件 我一看 “哇”出了声 我父亲是特工? 特有007的范儿 我有很多问题想问 不过他没回答 后来我想 总有一天我得问出来 后来我做了母亲 有了一个儿子 终于我觉得是时候了 他必须如实告诉我们 我当上母亲时 他正庆祝他的77岁生日 我突然非常害怕 害怕他离开 把他的沉默带走 把他的秘密带走 我让他知道 他的故事对于我们 或许还有别人 都是很重要的 他决定告诉我他的故事 我将其写成一本书
Here’s his story: my father was born in Argentina. His parents were of Russian descent. The whole family came to settle in France in the ’30s. His parents were Jewish, Russian and above all, very poor. So at the age of 14, my father had to work. And with his only diploma, the primary school certificate, he found work at a dry cleaner’s. That’s where he discovered something totally magical, when he talks about it, it’s fascinating -- it's the magic of dyeing chemistry. that was during the war and his mother had been killed when he was 15. This coincided with the time when he threw himself body and soul into chemistry as it was the only consolation for his sadness. He would ask his boss many questions all day long, to learn, to gather more and more knowledge, and at night, when no one was looking, he'd put his experience to practice. He was mostly interested in ink bleaching.
一会儿我会为各位读些摘录 关于他的故事 他出生于阿根廷 父母是俄裔 全家人在30年代搬到法国 他的父亲是俄裔犹太人 非常贫穷 所以我父亲14岁就得开始干活 而他的学历 仅仅到小学水平 只能到染洗店做工 在那儿他发现了奇妙的东西 他把那东西说得引人入胜 那就是神奇的染色化学 正值战时 他母亲在他15岁时就被杀害了 于是就在这时 他开始全身心投入到化学中去 这是他排解悲伤的唯一方式 每天他有一堆问题问老板 不断学习 积累越来越多的知识 夜深无人的时候 他将积累的经验用于实践 他最感兴趣的是墨水脱色
All this to tell you that if my father became a forger, actually, it was almost by accident. His family was Jewish, so they were hunted down. They were all arrested eventually and taken to the Drancy camp. They got out at the last minute thanks to their Argentinean papers. They were out, but still in danger. The “Jew” stamp was still on their papers. It was my grandfather who decided they needed forged documents. My father had been instilled with such respect for the law that although he was being persecuted, he’d never thought of forged papers. But it was he who went to meet a man from the Resistance.
说这么多的意思是 我父亲成为一个赝造者 其实是无心之为 他的家人都是犹太人 所以遭到追捕 最终他们被捕带往德兰西集中营 多亏有阿根廷证件 他们得以离开 虽然他们出来了 但仍然危险 证件上还盖着“犹太人”的章 我祖父决定他们得弄到假证件 我父亲一直被教导要做守法公民 虽然他受到迫害 但从没想过办假证件这回事 但他去见了一个来自抵抗军的人
Back then, documents had hard covers, they were filled in by hand, and they stated your job. In order to survive, he needed work. He asked the man to write "dyer." Suddenly, the man looked very, very interested. “As a “dyer,” do you know how to bleach ink marks?” Of course, he knew. Suddenly, the man started explaining that actually the whole Resistance had a huge problem: even the top experts could not manage to bleach an ink called “indelible,” the "Waterman" blue ink. And my father immediately replied that he knew exactly how to bleach it. The man was very impressed with this 17-year-old who could immediately give him the formula, so he recruited him. Unknowingly, my father had just invented something you find in every schoolchild’s pencil case: the so-called "correction pen." (Applause)
那时文件是硬皮的 手写的信息 上面还要填写工作 为了生存 他需要工作 他让那个人写上 “染匠” 突然那个人很感兴趣地看着他 你是染匠 那你知道怎么去掉墨迹吗? 他当然知道 突然那个人开始解释 抵抗军面临一个大问题 即使是顶级专家 也无法去除一种“不可磨灭”的墨迹 即“威迪文”蓝墨水 我父亲立刻回答说他知道 怎么去除 这下 那个人当然对这个17岁的年轻人刮目相看 他能立刻给出方法 所以那个人雇了他 实际上 我父亲自己都不知道 他发明了 如今在每个学生笔盒里都能找到的东西 所谓的“涂改液” (鼓掌)
But it was only the beginning. That's my father. As soon as he got to the lab, though he was the youngest, he immediately saw there was a problem with the making of forged documents. All the groups would stop at falsifying.. But demand was ever-growing and it was difficult to tamper with existing documents. He thought they should be made from scratch. He started a press and started photoengraving. He started making rubber stamps, inventing all kind of things -- he invented a centrifuge using a bicycle wheel. Anyway, he had to do all this because he was completel obsessed with output. He had made a simple calculation: In one hour, he could make 30 forged documents. If he slept one hour, 30 people would die.
但那只是开始 我的父亲 他刚到实验室 虽然他是最年轻的 却立刻意识到伪造文件存在一个问题 所有工程都停在了篡改这一步 篡改已有的文件已经不易 而且需求一直在增长 他告诉自己一切要从零开始 他安置印刷机 开始修照片 做橡胶印章 发明各种各样的东西 他用一个自行车车轮和其他材料造出离心分离机 总之 他必须这么做 因为这一切生死攸关 他做了一个简单计算 他一个小时能做30份文件 如果他睡上一个小时 就会有30个人死去
This sense of responsability for other people’s lives when he was just 17 -- and also his guilt for being a survivor, since he had escaped the camp when his friends had not -- stayed with him all his life. And this is maybe explains why, for 30 years, he continued to make false papers at the cost of every sacrifice. I'd like to talk about those sacrifices, because there were many. There were obviously financial sacrifices because he always refused to be paid. To him, being paid would have meant being a mercenary. If he had accepted payment, he wouldn't be able to say "yes" or "no" depending on what he deemed a just or unjust cause. So he was a photographer by day, and a forger by night for 30 years. He was broke all of the time.
从17岁起 这种对他人生命的责任感 以及没能带朋友一起逃出集中营 而带来的愧疚感 便跟随了他一生 这也许是他30年间 不断赝造文件的根源 不惜任何代价 我想谈谈那些代价 因为那是很大的牺牲 首先是经济上的牺牲 他总是拒绝接受报酬 对他而言 接受报酬就意味着他的行为有功利性 如果他收了钱 他就失去了选择做或者不做的权利 不管是否正义都要照做 他白天摄影 晚上造假 持续了30年 一生都穷困不堪
Then there were the emotional sacrifices: How can one live with a woman while having so many secrets? How can one explain what one does at night in the lab, every single night? Of course, there was another kind of sacrifice involving his family that I understood much later. One day my father introduced me to my sister. He also explained to me that I had a brother, too, and the first time I saw them I must have been three or four, and they were 30 years older than me. They are both in their sixties now.
同时他也付出了情感上的代价 一个人怎么能带着这么多秘密与妻子生活在一起? 他要怎么解释每晚在实验室做什么? 当然 还有另一个牺牲 这牵扯到他的家庭 我过了很久才知道 有天父亲把我介绍给我姐姐 他说我还有个哥哥 我头次见他们的时候大概三四岁 而他们比我长30多岁 现在都已经60多了
In order to write the book, I asked my sister questions. I wanted to know who my father was, who was the father she had known. She explained that the father that she’d had would tell them he’d come and pick them up on Sunday to go for a walk. They would get all dressed up and wait for him, but he would almost never come. He'd say, "I'll call." He wouldn't call. And then he would not come. Then one day he totally disappeared. Time passed, and they thought he had surely forgotten them, at first. Then as time passed, after almost two years, they thought, "Well, perhaps our father has died." And then I understood that asking my father so many questions was stirring up a whole past he probably didn’t feel like talking about because it was painful. And while my half brother and sister thought they’d been abandoned, orphaned, my father was making false papers. And if he did not tell them, it was of course to protect them.
为了写这本书 我向姐姐询问 想了解父亲 她眼中的父亲 她说她眼里的父亲 总是告诉他们周日会带他们去散步 他们会穿得整整齐齐地等他 但他几乎从来不出现 他说他会给他们打电话 但他没有 后来他不回家了 有天他再也不出现了 时光飞逝 他们觉得他一定早就忘记他们了 一开始是那样想 再后来 时光匆匆 大概两年后 他们想 也许父亲已经死了 然后我明白了 问父亲那么多问题 是在勾起他不愿重提的旧事 因为那是很痛的回忆 正当我的姐姐哥哥以为他们被抛弃 成为了孤儿的时候 我父亲却在伪造文件 他没告诉他们 当然是为了保护他们
After the Liberation, he made false papers so the survivors of concentration camps could immigrate to Palestine before the creation of Israel. As he was a staunch anti-colonialist, he made false papers for Algerians during the Algerian war. After the Algerian war, at the heart of the internationa resistance movements, his name circulated and the whole world came knocking at his door. In Africa there were countrie fighting for their independence: Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Angola. And then my father connected with Nelson Mandela’ anti-apartheid party. He made forged papers for persecuted black South Africans.
解放后 他伪造文件 帮助集中营的幸存者移民到巴勒斯坦 那时以色列还未建国 后来他成为坚定的反殖民主义者 在阿尔及利亚战争期间帮助阿尔及利亚人伪造文件 阿战后 在国际抵抗运动的中心 流传着他的名字 越来越多人找他帮忙 在非洲 有些国家在为独立而战 几内亚 几内亚比绍 安哥拉 后来我父亲接触到尼尔森·曼德拉的反种族隔离党派 他为受迫害的南非黑人伪造文件
There was also Latin America. My father helped those who resisted dictatorships in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and then it was the turn of Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Colombia, Peru, Uruguay, Chile and Mexico. Then there was the Vietnam War. My father made forged papers for the American deserters who refused to take up arms against the Vietnamese. Europe was not spared either. My father made forged papers for the dissidents against Franco in Spain, Salazar in Portugal, against the colonels’ dictatorship in Greece, and even in France. There, just once, it happened in May of 1968. My father watched, benevolently, of course, the demonstrations of the month of May, but his heart was elsewhere, and so was his time because he had over 15 countries to serve.
还有拉丁美洲人 我父亲帮助那些不屈从独裁统治的人 先是在多米尼克共和国 海地 然后是巴西 阿根廷 委内瑞拉 厄尔萨瓜多尔 尼加拉瓜 哥伦比亚 祕鲁 乌拉圭 智利和墨西哥 后来越战期间 我父亲为美国逃兵伪造文件 因为他们不想对越南人使用暴力 欧洲也没被漏掉 我父亲为持不同政见者伪造文件 有西班牙反弗朗科者 葡萄牙反萨拉萨尔者 希腊反上校团独裁统治者 甚至在法国 只有一次 那是1968年的5月 我父亲看到了五月游行 但他仅仅是看而已 他的心不在那 也没时间理会 因为他要为15个国家服务
Once, though, he agreed to make false papers for someone you might recognize. (Laughter) He was much younger in those days, and my father agreed to make false papers to enable him to come back and speak at a meeting. He told me that those false papers were the most media-relevant and the least useful he’d had to make in all his life. But, he agreed to do it, even though Daniel Cohn-Bendit’s life was not in danger, just because it was a good opportunity to mock the authorities, and to show them that there’s nothin more porous than borders -- and that ideas have no borders.
有次 他同意给一个人伪造文件 这个人你们也许认识 (笑声) 那时候他还很年轻 我父亲同意做假证件 使他可以回国到一个会议上发言 他告诉我那是他做过的最和媒体相关 也是最没用的证件 但他还是同意了 尽管丹尼尔·科恩·本迪没有生命危险 只是因为 那是个嘲弄政府的 好机会 并且能告诉他们国界线有多不严实 思想是没有国界的
All my childhood, while my friends’ dads would tell them Grimm’s fairy tales, my father would tell me stories about very unassuming heroes with unshakeable utopias who managed to make miracles. And those heroes did not need an army behind them. Anyhow, nobody would have followed them, except for a handful [of] men and women of conviction and courage. I understood much later that it was his own story my father would tell me to get me to sleep. I asked him whether, considering the sacrifices he had to make, he ever had any regrets. He said no. He told me that he would have been unable to witness or submit to injustice without doing anything. He was persuaded, and he's still convinced that another world is possible -- a world where no one would ever need a forger. He's still dreaming about it. My father is here in the room today. His name is Adolfo Kaminsky and I’m going to ask him to stand up. (Applause) Thank you.
我小的时候 朋友们的爸爸都会给他们讲格林童话 我父亲却给我讲低调的英雄 他们怀抱建立乌托邦的坚定理想 创造出奇迹 那些英雄不需要军队 本来也没有人愿意跟随他们 除了少数有信仰和勇气的人 我后来才知道 他哄我睡觉时讲的都是他自己的故事 我问他 牺牲了这么多 他是否后悔过 他说不 他说他无法 对非正义行为视而不见 他曾受过迫害 但他仍然相信 有这样一个世界 那里不需要赝造者 他现在仍如此期望 我的父亲 今天就在这个房间 他的名字是阿道夫・卡明斯基 我将请他站起来 (鼓掌) 谢谢