Identity papers were absolutely indispensable for someone fleeing or living under an assumed name. In order to feign a credible identity, various documents such as ID cards, passports, baptismal certificates, birth certificates, driver’s licenses, and credentials had to be forged. Some victims of persecution had a very skilled hand in this regard. They first forged papers for themselves and then for others at risk. Resistance groups set up workshops where forgers, some of them professional graphic artists, worked, forging large numbers of documents. Countless Jews owe their lives to these forgers.
The twenty-year-old Jeanne Barnier worked as of April 1939 as a secretary in Dieulefit city hall in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region. She issued hundreds of identity documents with false data for Jews at risk. She used forms, blank documents, and the official stamps in the office. The chief of the local gendarmerie helped her numerous times. When she had to report the theft of a stamp, he gave her tips on how to act and what to say at the hearings.
Adolfo Kaminsky (b. 1925) suffered persecution as a Jew and forged documents for others at risk. His mother died shortly after France was occupied, and Kaminsky was certain that she had been murdered. After that, he participated in sabotage actions carried out by a resistance group in Normandy. An apprentice dyer, he built fuses and mixed chemicals that were used to damage wiring and train tracks. Adolfo Kaminsky later went underground in Paris. He came into contact with the Jewish resistance group La Sixième (The Sixth). They recruited him as a forger because of his knowledge of chemistry. He kept refining his techniques and created thousands of forged ID cards. He was never exposed.
The Persoonsbewijzencentrale (Identity Card Center, PBC) was probably the largest forgery workshop in the German-occupied territories. It was started by the sculptor Gerrit van der Veen. Many members of the group were Jews. From 1942 on, the Amsterdam workshop created roughly 65,000 forged identity documents and tens of thousands of other documents. The group also carried out robberies in order to procure blank ID cards and food ration cards. After an attack on the Amsterdam resident registration office in late March of 1943, those who participated in the attack were arrested. In May of 1944, members of the PBC attempted to break them out of the Weteringschans prison. Consequently, most members of the group, including van der Veen, were shot.
Cioma (Samson) Schönhaus, who was himself persecuted as a Jew, wanted to resist the persecution of other Jews. He came into contact with a group of Protestants in Berlin-Dahlem who looked after Jews and gave them refuge. Schönhaus started forging documents for the group. He had begun a graphic arts apprenticeship, and the skills he learned there proved extremely helpful in this endeavor.
Schönhaus went underground in September of 1942. He assumed a false identity and forged his own identification documents. When he lost his ID card, his chance of being discovered increased. Helene Jacobs, one of the group’s helpers, hid him in her apartment in Berlin’s Wilmersdorf district, where he continued “reworking” identification documents. He forged a total of about two hundred ID cards. When Jacobs and other members of the group were apprehended in 1943, Schönhaus barely evaded arrest. He escaped by bicycle to Switzerland.
René Babaz (1899–1974) was active in the French Resistance in Lyon and Paris. Together with his son Robert he forged stamps, ID cards, passports, forms, and certificates of all kinds. The forged papers helped people survive through an assumed identity. Babaz also provided individuals with food ration coupons. People submitted orders for the documents they needed to René Babaz’s mother. Secret meetings also took place in her house. Babaz’s son Robert was arrested in March 1944 and then shot on September 2 in Natzweiler concentration camp. René Babaz was able to rescue the forgery utensils from the apartment. He barely evaded arrest in July 1944 when his mother’s home was searched.
A variety of materials and tools were necessary to create forged identification papers: printing presses were used to print forms and blank ID cards that looked deceptively authentic. Official stamps from the police and administrative authorities were either copied or taken from official inventories through connections. Names on documents could be removed with “Tintentod” ink eradicator so that assumed names could be inserted. The photos were attached to the ID cards with a grommet press.
