Adolfo Kaminsky was born in Argentina to Russian Jewish parents. In 1932 the family moved to Vire in northern France, where he began an apprenticeship as a dyer. The town was occupied by German troops in 1940. Shortly after, Kaminsky first took part in a resistance group’s sabotage operations. He made fuses and mixed chemicals, with which cables and rail tracks were damaged.
The family was arrested in 1943 and taken to Drancy deportation camp. They secretly contacted the Argentinian consulate, which managed to get them released. After another arrest and release, they went underground in Paris. When they obtained forged papers, Kaminsky came into contact with the Jewish resistance group La Sixième, which recruited him as a forger. He used increasingly sophisticated methods to make thousands of identity documents. He was never discovered.
After his liberation, Adolfo Kaminsky went on forging papers for years. He began by helping Jews who wanted to emigrate to Palestine without permits. He also supported refugees and people in hiding during the Algerian War and in the South African anti-Apartheid movement.