Undeterred, Suzanne followed up on every lead suggested by the refugee rumour mill, as first one embassy and then another was touted as a possibility. But it always came to nothing. Michel read between the lines of her letters and deduced fading hope and growing desperation. However, just when things seemed most dire he was handed a letter from the camp’s censor. Suzanne had written in excited, almost ecstatic prose: at last a country - Venezuela - was considering issuing a visa.
Suzanne had saved his life. After eight months in a concentration camp, slowly slipping towards death, a piece of paper gave Michel renewed hope of freedom. On 12 December 1941, he trudged to the railway halt carrying a small bag that he dropped repeatedly because he was too weak to maintain a grip on the handle. He was transported by train back across France, guarded by two gendarmes, to the transit camp of Les Milles, a disused brick and tile factory six miles south-west of Aix en Provence.[67]
A high wall and a barbed-wire fence had been constructed around the dilapidated buildings, instantly converting them into a prison compound. The camp had been created as a detention camp for German and Austrian refugees suspected of being a fifth column for the Reich, an irony that cut deep into the Jews and opponents of Hitler who formed most of the inmate population. When Michel arrived the walls were still covered with the murals of the painter Max Ernst.) It had since become a holding centre for those with an ‘imminent chance’ of emigration.[68] In comparison with the other camps the conditions were bearable. ‘The people there were, after all, expected to get out and the authorities knew they would talk about it.’
Simone, a friend from the days at Bordeaux University, and her husband, Charles, visited him in the camp. ‘Simone was a French girl, a lovely person, who had married a good friend of mine, Eric Meier, a Jew from Mannheim, Germany. After the collapse of France the police went to look for her husband. Simone explained he had joined up with the British and she thought he had gone over to England during the evacuation of the army from Dunkirk. So they stopped looking for him. She soon got involved with a Frenchman called Charles Lemoine, whom she married. Which was all right, because Charles Lemoine was Eric Meier.’ Charles had obtained false papers and the couple made a living from a food stand at Marseille station.
Michel had left the bulk of his belongings behind at the apartment in Nice when first arrested, and Suzanne’s mother had gone there and packed them. Now that they thought he was about to emigrate they brought the most important belongings to Les Milles in three large suitcases. They were immediately taken by the guards. The initial enthusiasm over the hope of emigration was soon dampened. Suzanne learned, and subsequently made clear in her correspondence through oblique references and coded asides, that although the letter from the Venezuelan Embassy was genuine, in reality it did not mean that a visa would ever be granted. But even though the letter would not provide sanctuary in Venezuela, it did present the possibility of escape.
The letter from Venezuelan officials in Vichy entitled him to a one-day pass, valid from three a.m. to six p.m. - enabling him to visit the consulate in Marseille to obtain a visa. He confided to an old friend he had run into at the camp, a Czech refugee named Turner, that he did not intend to return. The man grabbed his arm and squeezed it, wishing him luck. Michel left the camp at dawn, and caught an early bus for Marseille. He waited for hours at the Venezuelan consulate, only to be informed that his letter was of no official value and that a visa was impossible. He went to the American consulate and was similarly rebuffed.
The disappointments were expected, and he now reverted to his secondary plan and took a train to Lyon to join Suzanne. It was an emotional reunion, although Michel could see that Suzanne was deeply affected by his appearance. He was gaunt, his eyes were black and sunken, and his distended belly hung over the belt of his trousers. But for a few hours all that mattered was that he was alive and the lovers were together.
They discussed the visa. Suzanne was uncharacteristically vague in her account of how the embassy letter had been obtained, suggesting it was unimportant and merely a tiresome detail of the past. She was now impatient to obtain the actual visa itself, and suggested that this is what they should concentrate upon. But Michel was relentless in his questioning and became more and more dogged as Suzanne grew increasingly evasive. ‘She tried not to tell me, but I wanted to know the truth. We knew each other so well, including one another’s thoughts, it was impossible to lie.’
The truth exactly replicated the circumstances the young lovers had discussed in bed in Nice before Michel’s internment. During the months when Michel was in Le Vernet Suzanne had despaired when efforts to save him began to seem hopeless. Camp stories of starvation, disease and death haunted her. In her perpetual round of the embassies, a young, aristocratic attaché who worked in the Cuban Embassy in Vichy had befriended her. He was sympathetic and patient and offered to help. Refugees had grown wary of Cuban visas since the liner Saint Louis, carrying almost a thousand Jews, had been turned away from Havana, and its occupants returned to Europe after being subsequently denied entry into the United States.[69] The Cuban diplomat said he had a friend in the Venezuelan Embassy, and he was able to ask him for a letter promising a visa, even though the country demanded proof of Roman Catholic baptism for admission. But at least it had allowed Michel to leave Le Vernet.
Michel insisted on knowing how Suzanne had obtained such a favour. She replied that she had begged the diplomat to save the life of her lover, and that he had been moved by the appeal and agreed to help.
‘No,’ Michel said coldly. ‘You gave in! We know each other so well. We know each other’s thoughts, we never lie to each other. And now I see that you are lying and know what you did.’ He said firmly that they had discussed just such a possibility, and that Suzanne surely remembered what had been said. They had argued about it. He had been adamant that the course she had chosen to take would be absolutely unacceptable to him in any circumstances. Even if it were a matter of life and death. ‘It is not just a question of physical survival - it’s essential now to live without compromise. I know you feel terrible about this - but you know me! I told you that I would never be able to owe my life to such an act. I told you in Nice two years ago that all you would achieve by this would be to break up our life together. And that I would be obliged to go back to the camp. You understand me well enough to know that I have to do what I said I would.’ He stood. ‘I’m leaving. It’s finished.’
He turned to go. Suzanne tried to hold him back, tearfully entreating him to stay. He pulled himself away and left the apartment and walked out into the streets of Lyon.
‘It was a young man’s decision. Of course I have had second thoughts about it over the years... and third thoughts and fourth thoughts. I have agonised over it. I can honestly say that jealousy was not a part of it. It was the breach of trust. I genuinely felt that any compromise in those dangerous times might be the end of all of us. And looking back I realise this has been a leitmotif in my life. I have always asked myself in every situation and over every action how I would live with it. Egotistical, perhaps, but that has always been very important. And I could not live with that - I couldn’t! I did not want. . . did not dare to owe my freedom and life to such an act of love that was also betrayal.’
And so he buried his love alive. He knew that to return now to Les Milles guaranteed internment and punishment. He had originally intended to escape under a new identity, and somehow improvise a life as an outlaw, but now his own severe standards and personal code obliged him to return. He decided to travel back the following day and present himself to the camp authorities. ‘The only papers I had on me was the pass, which already made me illegal. All hotels handed in guests’ registration cards to the police every morning so I knew I would have to leave early. I wanted to return voluntarily, not in chains.’
He made his way to a small hotel and took a cheap room. On each floor there was a single, shared lavatory, and Michel visited it in the middle of the night. As he
entered, he turned on the light and was met by the sight of a bulging wallet lying on the floor. ‘I picked it up and it was packed with money. A gift from heaven! I was very low on cash and this was a lot of money. But as I looked through the wallet I found there was also an ID card.’
The carte d’identité was a man’s most precious possession, the single legitimising document that opened the door to a normal life: ration cards, rail and bus tickets, a residence permit. Anyone in France at this time without one - especially an escapee - would find everyday life impossible. One of the reasons there were so few escape attempts from the camps was that the lack of ID was as powerful a deterrent as the bayonets of the guards at the gate.[70]
‘A gift from heaven - and I could be free! I cursed the ID card because that gave the money a proprietor.’ Michel took the money from the wallet and fingered it, a wad thick enough to allow him to live frugally for months. He scrutinised the ID to see how it could be adapted to carry his own photograph. And then he caught sight of himself in the mirror poring over the wallet. It was the image of a pickpocket. ‘I had refused to accept freedom because of Suzanne’s act, and now I was contemplating being a thief. Stealing money. I weighed leaving the wallet with the ID, and taking only the money. But how could I live with that? I would have committed an act I would consider despicable in another human being.’
The bulging wallet began to seem less a gift from the gods than a temptation designed to weaken his resolve and make him abandon his standards. He took it down to the hotel reception and asked for the owner by name. The desk clerk was reluctant to wake a guest in the middle of the night, but in the face of Michel’s insistence agreed to accompany him to the room. The clerk knocked gently on the door without result, until Michel stepped forward and hammered on it to wake the sleeping man.
He appeared at the door, dishevelled and bleary-eyed, furious at being disturbed. ‘What the hell do you want?’
‘Have you by any chance lost your wallet?’ Michel asked.
The man blinked, stupid with sleep, and then turned in panic to check the top of a chest of drawers. ‘My God! It’s gone! Where is it?’
Michel handed over the wallet. He explained that he had found it lying on the floor of the lavatory, and assured the man he would find both money and ID card intact. The guest scarcely thanked him, but mumbled about leaving a reward at the desk in the morning. Michel went back to bed. He left at dawn before either his fellow guest or the police could reach him, and made his way back to Les Milles.
Turner, the Czech refugee who had wished Michel luck in his escape attempt, was mystified and enraged at his return. He listened to the stories of the visa and the wallet in incredulous silence, then exploded: ‘You’re crazy! Crazy!’ Principles and high ideals, Turner suggested, were fine things in peacetime but survival and freedom took precedence in war. He grew heated as he spoke. How could anyone be so stupid? Turner raved at Michel as he tried to defend his action, shouting that he was talking nonsense, and dangerous, suicidal nonsense at that. Michel resigned himself to being misunderstood. He realised his friend had invested so much hope in the escape attempt that he took its abandonment as a personal betrayal.
A few days later Michel was in the latrines, which comprised holes cut in rough planks placed over open trenches. Men spent as little time as possible in the latrines, but on his brief visit he spotted a ring jammed between the earth and the edge of one of the planks. It was a beauty - a thick band of gold with a large diamond at its centre. Another cloaca, another gift from heaven. It was as if the gods were mocking him.
The next time he ran into Turner he told him of the incredible find. The man turned white. ‘My God, that’s my ring!’
‘Come on!’
‘No, it’s my ring, I promise you.’
It had been Turner’s great secret, smuggled into Les Milles when he first arrived. All the wealth the refugee owned in the world was in that ring and it represented his last chance of freedom, and then he had lost it. He described his panicked, clandestine search for the missing ring when he had crawled on his hands and knees over every inch of the courtyard, and gone through the barracks with a fine-tooth comb. The loss had plunged him into a deep depression and partly accounted for his fury at Michel’s inexplicable rejection of a golden opportunity.
‘Describe it,’ Michel said sceptically. Turner described in detail a gold band with a square-cut diamond set in the middle. Michel dug into his pocket and held the ring out to Turner in the palm of his hand. ‘Here it is. Do you want it back? According to you, I should never have told you. I should keep it.’
He handed the ring to Turner, who took the ring with tears in his eyes. ‘A miracle!’ he exclaimed. ‘The ring’s my one chance.’
Michel nodded, saying nothing. ‘I wanted him to understand my actions. The loss of the ring had brought him so low, almost destroyed him because he felt he had lost his last chance at freedom. It was the same with the man and the wallet. And with Suzanne there had been a betrayal of trust. And that endangered both our lives. In those days I believed trust was more important than love.’ He was aware of the harshness of his decision concerning Suzanne, but was also clear about the ruthlessness and absolute evil of the enemy. To indulge any weakness, even on the side of the angels, was to court disaster. He did not regret his stand, but would be obliged to suffer for it.
On his return to Les Milles Michel had been put down for punishment. He feared a return to Le Vernet, but there was a worse fate in store for him. The administration ordered him to be transferred to a Foreign Labour Battalion at Gardanne, a punishment camp that serviced a coal mine.
The mine had been closed, he was told, since the First World War, but slave labour had allowed it to re-open with minimal expense and little regard for the safety of the workers.
‘I was forced to rise before sunrise at five a.m. to go down the mine. We were let down in an elevator cage for what seemed an age, then transferred to another, smaller cage and lowered further until we arrived at a depot for a small-gauge railway. We climbed on to the coal cars and had to keep our heads down for the long ride through murky, dust-filled, suffocating tunnels until we jumped off at our work zone.’
He had now entered a twilight world of half-naked men covered in sweat and coal dust, straining to push trucks loaded with coal. The hot half-light, the swirling mist of coal dust and the silent slaves presented an image of hell. At the first sight of this diabolical tableau Michel saw in his mind’s eye the words of Dante’s Inferno hanging over them in a fiery arc: Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate - All hope abandon, ye who enter here!
‘Once off the train I had to crawl on my hands and knees through a maze of narrow tunnels, in and out of passageways, sometimes pushing through inky water and sludge, until I reached my work station at the face, more than an hour after I had entered the mine.’ He was one of a team of eight slave-workers run by three professional Polish miners who acted as guards as well as foremen. ‘We slaves were so totally controlled and intimidated by this brutal system that the French never had to send any guards into the mine. The miners were not humans but brutes. No animal has the brutality of these men.’
The foreman-miners were well fed and well paid, receiving a bonus for each car filled. The slaves, of course, received nothing. The food was marginally more sustaining than at Le Vernet, but hopelessly inadequate for hard labour. ‘On the first day I was given a pick without a moment’s rest from the rigours of my underground journey and immediately had to begin prying coal loose from a seam. I dared not stop. I worked for a long time until my body demanded a few moments of rest. I set the handle of the pick upon the ground and bent over it for a moment, just to catch my breath.’ He was instantly grabbed by one of the Poles, who snarled, ‘You’d better not stop if you want to live through the day and get out of this mine!’
The hours of work seemed interminable. ‘My hands were covered with blisters that brought constant sharp pains with each blow of the pick. My empty
stomach ached with hunger.’ By lunchtime he was exhausted. There was a momentary rest when he only drank water, having eaten his daily ration of bread at breakfast, and watched the miners wolf large, meat-filled sandwiches. The men then returned to work without a break through the afternoon and into the evening. ‘Around me, every so often, a slave would be injured or killed by some accident or cave-in. Or would collapse from exertion. No one cared. Victims were simply thrown on to the coal car and hauled off like trash.’
At the end of the day, long after darkness had fallen, Michel made the long journey back to the surface. He showered in icy water and returned to the barracks. The routine never changed, six days a week. ‘I never saw the sun. Every day was an eternity.’[71]
The routine ground on. Michel entered a dark, timeless psychological zone in which he could not accurately tell if he had been working at the face for weeks or months or years. The days down in the bowels of the pit merged into a perpetual cycle of hunger, exhaustion and brutality.
On Sundays, the one day of rest, the slaves lay on their thin straw mats too exhausted to move. Some received visitors and even food parcels. An occasional visitor was an old Jewish tailor from Marseille who came to mend the prisoners’ rags. He was almost as poor as they were and received a pittance for his services. Michel liked to talk to him in Yiddish as he worked. One day the old man mentioned that he had originally lived in Le Havre.
The Test of Courage: (A Biography of) Michel Thomas Page 10