The Test of Courage: (A Biography of) Michel Thomas

by Christopher Robbins

  In the election of 1932 the Nazis became the most powerful political party Germany had ever seen, and Hitler the most powerful leader. Although short of a parliamentary majority (the Nazis never polled more than just over a third of the vote nationally, although the party won forty-six per cent in Breslau) it was the largest party in the Reichstag with a membership of over a million, almost fourteen million electors and a private army of four hundred thousand SA Storm Troopers and SS Blackshirts - a force four times larger than the feeble national army. The Communists had polled six million votes, won a hundred seats in the Reichstag and had their own private army, the Red Front. There were pitched battles in the streets of the larger cities between Nazis and Communists, leaving many dead.

  The young Michel witnessed the violence and was repelled by the unprincipled manipulation and dictatorial tendencies of both political extremes. In the struggle for power the Communists actually helped the Nazis achieve

  office, openly stating they would prefer to see Hitler in charge rather than lift a finger to save the republic. They also followed the Moscow-approved policy that gave priority to the elimination of the Social Democrats - not the Nazis -as the rival working-class party.[18] ‘It seemed to me that only a free society didn’t create conflict between Judaism and the state. So that you could not be a Jew and a fascist, or a Jew and a communist. A Jew cannot live in a police state. I always felt those Jews who were communists had a problem with identity and were trying to escape their Jewishness.’

  In January 1933, Adolf Hitler was made Chancellor of Germany. Life for German Jews became increasingly difficult and dangerous as a slew of anti-Semitic laws discriminated against them. About seventy per cent of Germany’s half million Jews - less than one per cent of the population - lived in cities. Primarily middle class, they had enjoyed legal equality since the late nineteenth century and had achieved a high degree of financial success. They were thoroughly assimilated into all walks of German life - ‘quoting Goethe at every meal’ - and identified closely with the country to the point of vociferously expressed patriotism.[19] Although the SA Storm Troopers were brutish and violent in their actions against Jews, Hitler preferred to pursue legal measures against them, and gave speeches in which he talked of peace and the futility of war.

  Jews sought a way to live within the contradictions and confusion created by the various Nazi decrees. But it took optimism bordering on self-delusion to believe life could continue normally after the Nazi-imposed boycott in April 1933, which severely limited Jewish participation in the economy. It was during this time that Michel first identified what he came later to condemn as ‘the Jewish weakness’. ‘There is the inability of the Jewish mind to perceive and accept the finality of evil. They will always say, whatever happens, in whatever language, “Ach, everything will be all right!” They see the darkness, the destruction - but no, everything will be all right. It is the result of four thousand years of teaching the goodness of man, that evil cannot triumph, and that good will always prevail. Things have to turn out well. It is different to hope that things will turn out all right - that is human and very important. To believe it is a weakness. A weakness that can become fatal.’

  It seemed to his elders around him that Michel had an uncanny ability to foretell events, and they credited him with an almost supernatural gift of premonition. But there was nothing other-worldly about it. ‘As a youngster I could see things coming. And when I look back on this I realise it was just a question of thinking things through. It was an intellectual process. And, of course, there was something happening in the country which to me would obviously end in total disaster, but people avoided it and didn’t want to face it. There was only one way, and that way led to war. I knew it couldn’t be different. I didn’t minimise the danger - I realised there was no future.’

  One evening three non-Jewish German friends came to Michel’s house unannounced. They were visibly upset and had important news. They had learned that he was about to be arrested and charged with acts of sabotage and wanted to warn him. The offence was minor - the slashing of a police car’s tyres - but Michel was in danger because of his vocal opposition to the Nazis. ‘I would have been very happy and proud to have committed these acts, but it so happened that I had not done anything.’ However, he had no illusions about the fate of anyone accused of such a crime in Hitler’s Germany. He left in the night for France.

  Michel’s aunt and uncle were away when he was warned about his imminent arrest, so he left Breslau at the age of nineteen, in May 1933, without saying goodbye. He had stopped briefly to bid farewell to Dr Riesenfeld, who gave him the typescript of an anti-Nazi article he had written for publication in an émigré newspaper in Paris. Michel planned to hitch-hike to France and, standing at the side of the road clad in a pair of knickerbockers, he looked the idealised picture of German youth and was soon given a lift. The driver asked where he was going, and when told Michel was leaving the country, asked why. ‘Ich bin Jude,’ Michel replied. I am a Jew.

  At Kehl he passed through German customs and crossed the bridge over the Rhine to the French city of Strasbourg. But the French refused to allow him entry on his Polish passport without a visa, so he tramped back across the bridge into Germany. He was taken by the Germans to police headquarters and questioned closely, painfully aware of Dr Riesenfeld’s anti-Nazi article in the pocket of his knickerbockers. After a couple of hours he was released, and considered putting his clothes into his rucksack and swimming across the Rhine, but rejected the plan as impractical. A study of the map suggested the best chance of undetected entry into France was from the Saarland, a German state occupied by France since the end of the Great War.[20] By cutting across country over mountains he thought he would be able to slip into the Saar without passing through any checkpoints, and enter France unchallenged.

  As he sat by the side of the road, a column of uniformed Hitler Youth passed singing Nazi marching songs. They shot out their right hands in the Nazi salute. Michel did not respond. It was a provocation, and two youths peeled away from the rear of the column to confront him. There was a scuffle and he struck out, using his side-satchel as a weapon. The whole column turned and came after him. And on this occasion, discretion proved the better part of valour: ‘I ran.’

  He studied the map again and chose a place known as Drei Zinnen - Three Peaks - to cross into the Saar. It was late in the afternoon by the time he reached the point of departure. He stopped to ask directions of three farm labourers working in the fields on their vines. One crossed himself at the mention of Drei Zinnen, and as he pointed out the path told Michel that the castle ruins on top of each of the hills were haunted. No one went there at night and he advised postponing the journey until morning. Undeterred by local superstition, Michel set off as the sun began to go down.

  It was a long, steep climb through thick woods to the first set of ruins and it was dark by the time he reached them. He paused at the top of the hill to take a swig of water from his canteen and saw something that made the hairs on the back of his neck stiffen. Irregular flickering lights were moving through the trees beneath the castle walls. They were unlike anything he had ever seen and inexplicable. They were simply not of this world. ‘Ghostly’ was the word that came to mind to describe them. He felt terror and creeping panic. ‘My first reaction was to run. But that meant losing control, which was dangerous. I controlled my breathing and forced myself to keep going at a steady pace.’

  He kept the fear in check as he descended the other side of the hill. There was nothing he could think of to explain the mysterious lights, which only increased his sense of dread. He began to climb the second hill, and as he reached the top he saw more ghostly white lights among the trees and ruins. Sheer will power kept him going, and by the time he reached the top of the third hill day was breaking, although once again he saw weak, moving lights.

  A hunter dressed in green, carrying a shotgun and accompanied by a dog, appeared out of the trees. Michel had never felt hap
pier to see a fellow human being. Exhausted by his experience, he greeted the man warmly and told him of the previous night’s terrors. The hunter nodded calmly, but seemed neither surprised nor alarmed at Michel’s story. The ghostly lights, he explained, were an unusual local phenomenon caused by phosphorus formed in decomposing tree trunks. ‘I wish I had known this before I started my journey. It was a very, very uncomfortable night.’

  Michel reached the border without incident and crossed through unpatrolled green fields into the Saar, and then hitch-hiked to Paris. At this time, France was a tolerant, cosmopolitan country and a haven for thousands of refugees from Nazi Germany. ‘It was almost in vogue to be a refugee then. There were numerous refugees from Germany and Jewish groups were well organised and well funded to receive them.’

  By late summer the generosity of the charities and the tolerance of the authorities were stretched to the limit as an ever-increasing stream of refugees entered the country fleeing poverty and fascism. Most spoke no French, were uneducated and impoverished, and imposed an enormous strain on an economy that was already severely depressed. Unemployment stood at record levels. The immigrants, many of whom were Jewish, were resented as a threat to the job security of the ordinary Frenchman and xenophobia and anti-Semitism grew as a result. Most refugees in Paris were moved into camps.

  Michel himself lived a hand-to-mouth existence, and looked up family friends who had moved to France from Lodz many years earlier. The family had a daughter called Lucienne, whom Michel had fondly known as Luba when they had played together as five-year-olds, and in the intervening years she had developed into a beautiful young woman. Michel felt himself enormously attracted to her, and began to spend all his time at her parents’ house. It was the beginning of a strong physical and emotional relationship, his first true love.

  The passionate affair made life more interesting but no less difficult. It was illegal for refugees to work and his family was only allowed to send the equivalent of fifteen dollars a month. And he spoke poor French. ‘I had learned it in school, but what does it mean to learn in school? I couldn’t read it or speak, and wasn’t able to get along at all. I simply could not communicate.’

  He acquired alien skills that he exploited illegally, becoming adept at painting and decorating. Hanging wallpaper was a particular speciality. In another job he hand-packed razor blades in cellophane, one after the other, possibly the most boring task he has ever performed in a long life. He also sold gaudy hand-painted ties. His old school friend, Karl Hamburg - Kai - joined him from Breslau, another Jewish refugee from Hitler.[21] They vowed to go to a French university together, which was a challenge and something of an impertinence as both spoke bad French and were penniless refugees. But they were determined to enter university by the autumn, which gave them the spring and summer to bring their language skills up to a suitable standard. ‘I found ways of applying my grammatical knowledge that made my progress in the language leap ahead.’ He did not know it, but he was beginning to explore techniques that would eventually merge to become his unique language system.

  The friends agreed to split up and explore various cities throughout France. Afterwards they would reunite, pool their experiences and impressions, and decide where to go. When the friends met again Michel made a strong case for Bordeaux. It was an attractive, sophisticated city with a symphony orchestra and an opera, but more importantly it was on the ocean and close to the Pyrenees. This meant the friends could enjoy the beach in the summer and ski in the mountains in winter. Karl was persuaded, and the university accepted them both in September.

  Bordeaux was also full of refugees, and Michel shared a small apartment with Kai in a house used by ladies of the night, good-natured, amiable girls who bustled clients up and down the stairs at all hours. Once again he had to make money to eat and pay for lodgings. A family restaurant was pleased to make an arrangement for free food for both of them if he was able to fill the restaurant. As president of the Jewish student body he persuaded many of them to take their meals in the restaurant, and it was soon packed.

  Later, he persuaded the Bordeaux council to lend him a rundown building owned by the city on the Rue Margaux for the refugee community in exchange for an undertaking to renovate it. ‘We turned it into a beautiful place, equipped it with a big kitchen, and served meals in a garden courtyard in the summer.’ A busy laundry service run out of the house also became a profitable concern.

  To make money Michel used his Leica camera to take pictures of children at play in the city’s parks. He then went to their mothers and offered them the option of buying the photos. ‘And of course they loved them - I was rarely turned down.’ He worked late into the night developing and printing. He also began to paint on glass, describing his style as ‘assembly line’. He worked on ten paintings at a time lined up in a row and moved from canvas to canvas adding colour. ‘I knocked them out.’ The first fifty were framed and taken by a dealer to a large department store. Sales were slow. Michel sent student friends to stand in front of the paintings and talk about them with excitement. Sales remained slow. He sent them back with money to buy. ‘So they bought the paintings and brought them to me. Sales became quite good. The store gave me a big order and the paintings I had bought went back to the store.’

  Michel had applied for a place in the chemistry department at the university, and although he passed the exams he found that he was unable to afford the course. So he switched his studies to philology, philosophy, archaeology and the history of art. He was also interested in psychology, particularly the Viennese psychoanalysts Alfred Adler and Sigmund Freud. He became particularly intrigued by the work of the nineteenth-century German philosopher and classical philologist Friedrich Nietzsche.

  Another profound admirer of Nietzsche, of course, was Adolf Hitler. Never could two individuals - Michel Thomas and Adolf Hitler - have interpreted a philosophy in such contradictory terms. One man read to challenge himself intellectually, while the other sought texts to confirm his preconceptions.

  Nietzsche maintained that all human behaviour is motivated by the will to power. He argued that traditional Christian values had lost their potency in the lives of people - ‘God is dead’ - and that these had been replaced by a slave mentality created by weak and resentful individuals, who encouraged such concepts as ‘gentleness’ and ‘kindness’ only because they served their interests. New values were needed to replace the traditional ones to help form a superman who was secure, independent and highly individualistic. The superman would have strong feelings but would always control his passion. He would be concerned with the realities of the human world rather than the heavenly promises of religion, and would affirm life with all its suffering and pain. The superman would evolve his own ‘master morality’, made up only of those values he deemed valid.

  The student Michel saw the positive in Nietzsche, interpreting the will to power as control over self and responsible power over others. He saw the emphasis on independence and individuality as a path to individual moral responsibility. Hitler took a different view and interpreted the philosopher’s ideas to suit his own totalitarian instincts and justify a master-slave society. Nietzsche seemed to support Hitler’s lack of belief in either God or conscience, which the Fiihrer dismissed as ‘a Jewish invention, a blemish like circumcision’. The concept that a nation was nothing more than nature’s way of providing a few important men also suited Hitler, who felt chosen for a mission by providence and therefore exempt from ordinary human moral restraint. And while Michel might subscribe to the Nietzschean phrase ‘Praised be that which toughens’, Hitler would have it posted in every SS barracks.[22]

  Michel attended a summer philosophy course at the Sorbonne, in Paris, where a chance remark made by one of the professors made an enormous impact: Nobody knows anything about the learning process of the human mind. The statement had a profound influence on his later life.

  Despite a growing undercurrent of resentment towards immigrants and Jews, the Frenc
h electorate in 1936 put into power the anti-fascist Popular Front, led by Léon Blum, a socialist and Jew. But as the economy grew worse, and the government proved inept, enemies of the Third Republic complained that a Jewish premier proved that the country had fallen into the hands of the Jews, and ruin would follow. Most of all, they feared that it would lead them into war with Hitler. (In fact, the diplomatic thrust of Blum’s government was to appease Hitler - with catastrophic results.)

  An important influence at this time on Michel’s political thinking was Michael Nelken, a young German writer who wrote under the name Michael Ren.[23] The men had met at Bordeaux University and became good friends until Nelken returned home to Germany to visit his mother and seemed to disappear. There was no word from him for almost two years, but in one of the many fateful coincidences in Michel’s life the friends bumped into each other only minutes after Nelken’s return to Paris.

  He was a changed man. In Germany, his writing had attracted the attention and displeasure of the Nazi government and he had been arrested. He was sent to Dachau, near Munich - the Nazis’ first concentration camp opened in March 1935 to incarcerate critics and enemies of the regime.[24] Nelken was released only after the intervention of Wilhelm Furtwangler, conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, but not before the writer had contracted a bad case of tuberculosis.[25] On his return to France, doctors recommended that he live in a warm climate in the south.

  Michel could see that his friend was deathly ill and offered to accompany him as companion and nurse. The men arranged to rent a house in Grasse, in Provence, but this created a crisis in Michel’s relationship with Lucienne. He had suggested that she accompany him and that they live together, a scandalous arrangement for the times. Lucienne certainly thought so, and issued an ultimatum: marriage or nothing! Michel left for the south without her.