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

by Christopher Robbins

  Barbie listened, but looked sceptical. He opened the portfolio and inspected the contents, looking at each painting. Suddenly, he gathered up the ID papers, returned the paintings to their portfolio and handed them back. ‘You can leave. Au revoir.’

  Au revoir. Until we meet again.[99]

  The incident had a profound influence not only on the way Michel thought, but on the way he acted for the rest of the war. ‘It taught me to trust my instincts and premonitions. Before that I had been a strict rationalist. I learned to listen to my inner voices.’

  Once outside the building, Michel went to a phone and placed a number of calls to Résistance friends and Jewish organisations. They immediately went to visit the various cafés used by the refugees to alert them of the Gestapo trap in the Rue St Catharine. ‘We warned as many as we could and also set up a network of people in the area to interrupt anyone on their way to the office. Despite the danger there were people who didn’t want to believe me. I had to insist.’

  That winter’s day in February 1943 marked the beginning of Barbie’s terror operations in the city, and the brutality of his methods would earn him the title ‘Butcher of Lyon’. Almost a hundred foreign Jews were arrested at the office in the Rue St Catharine, and eighty-six were transported to Auschwitz and their deaths. Later, Barbie would claim that he did not know the fate of those he sent away, but when a UGIF committee member tried repeatedly to persuade Barbie not to shoot arrested Jews, he replied, ‘Shot or deported, there’s no difference.’ It is estimated that by the end of the war seven thousand, five hundred and ninety-one people were deported from Lyon by the Gestapo.

  The Gestapo had commandeered sixty rooms on the second and third floors of the Hotel Terminus, twenty of which were for the interrogation of prisoners brought daily from Montluc prison. Barbie, then aged twenty-nine, divided his department into six specialist sections: Résistance and Communists; Sabotage; Jews; False ID; Counter-intelligence; and Intelligence. At first there were twenty-five men working under him, a number that gradually increased over time as he became responsible for an area covering fifteen thousand square miles. He was a hard-driving, efficient workaholic feared by his own men, with the absolute power of life and death over his victims. He also carried a personal grudge against the French: his father had been seriously wounded in the First World War.

  In the weeks following the takeover of the city, Barbie worked to build up his connections with Frenchmen he considered sympathetic and trustworthy. Special kiosks for denunciations were introduced at which queues formed every day. Later, he said, ‘Without them I could never have done my job so well... At the beginning it was very hard for us. We had very few contacts. Everything was new. I had to build an effective team, carefully handpicking each recruit. We were showered with denunciations of the Résistance by the French and I usually tried to find long-term collaborators from amongst the denunciators.’[100]

  These French collaborators, handpicked by Barbie, came to form a private army one hundred and twenty strong dedicated to fighting terror with terror: ‘Millionaire Jews, bourgeois freemasons, you who subsidise and arm the assassins, you will pay with your life.’ The Gestapo expanded its torture facilities when it took over a large military school where three vast cellars were converted into cells. After initial interrogation on the ground floor, the prisoners were taken to specially equipped rooms on the fourth. Each room had one or two baths, a table with leather straps, a gas oven for heating pokers red hot, and electrical prongs. As music played in the background, men and women were stripped naked and hung from the ceiling by their wrists; children were tortured in front of their parents. The tortures imposed were a diabolical blend of ancient and modern: victims were plunged into freezing or boiling water, burned with cigarettes, had three-inch needles rammed into their rib cages, and acid injected into their bladders. They were savaged by dogs and had their backs broken with a spiked iron ball. Fingers and toes were severed with blunt knives, nipples ripped off with metal tongs, and one man had his eyes put out and was scalped. The workaholic Barbie was often present at these torture sessions. In between the ministrations of his experts he chose to work victims over with a leather cosh, pausing only to sip from a glass of beer or take a bite from a sandwich.

  The escape from the encounter with this monster at Rue St Catharine saved Michel from a similar fate. His superiors in the Secret Army now considered him to be in great danger in Lyon. To slip through the fingers of Klaus Barbie once was great good luck; a second meeting would almost certainly prove fatal. Michel was issued with yet another identity and told to remain in Grenoble.

  The pace of Michel’s Résistance activities quickened, and he worked around the clock, happy to be fighting back. His dedication and steely resolve soon attracted the attention of local leaders who burdened him with new duties and responsibilities. He still occasionally ran the gauntlet of contrôles and road blocks to go into Lyon, but most of the workload revolved around Grenoble. Although the city came under the jurisdiction of the tolerant Italians, the Gestapo employed the Milice, its home-grown French equivalent, to carry out its dirty work in the region.

  The Milice was a political police force that had been created at the beginning of the year and was to give the Gestapo a run for its money in terms of violence and ruthlessness. The struggle between the Résistance and the Milice over the next eighteen months would take on the vicious nature of a civil war. The Milice was led by Joseph Darnand, a conspicuous and eager collaborator. He was the son of a railway worker and had little education but was a genuine hero of the First World War, one of only three men in 1918 to be given a citation ordaining them ‘artisans of the final victory’. He had been awarded the nation’s highest soldier’s decoration, the médaille militaire, by Marshal Pétain himself, although the old man had remarked that Darnand possessed ‘as much political intelligence as a kerbstone’. Despite his great personal bravery, and love of military life, the army did not consider him officer material. After the war Darnand ran a garage in Nice, nursing his bitterness about being passed over for a commission, and became a militant fascist denouncing Jews, Communists and Freemasons.

  Darnand’s speciality in war had been guerrilla exploits behind enemy lines, and now the poacher turned heartless gamekeeper. His view on the Résistance was straightforward: ‘What is this Résistance shit? Shepherds to whom the archangel appeared?’ His view of de Gaulle was similarly robust: ‘He’s surrounded by Jews and Freemasons and assorted deserters.’[101]

  As local police, and even some German military units, lost their stomach for civilian repression, Darnand’s Milice filled the gap. At last the Nazis had what they had always hoped for in France - a paramilitary political police force manned by native toughs. It numbered twenty-nine thousand men and women throughout the country, and its members were chosen for ideological fervour rather than professional competence. The fanatic and unscrupulous Darnand, together with eleven of his senior men, were granted the great honour of being allowed to take the oath of loyalty to Hitler and being admitted into the Waffen-SS.

  The uniform of the Milice comprised a dark blue jacket and trousers, khaki shirt, black tie and beret. Its emblem was a white gamma, the zodiacal sign of the ram. It had a marching song that proclaimed: ‘For those who brought our defeat/No punishment is harsh enough.’ The oath of allegiance made it clear exactly who was responsible for France’s defeat. Members swore to ‘fight against democracy, against Gaullist insurrection and against Jewish leprosy’.

  The moment the Germans crossed the Demarcation Line, Darnand proudly declared his intention to work with the occupiers, an action that bestowed power on the Milice out of all proportion to its membership. While other French military units were disarmed, the Milice received weapons from the Germans and carte blanche to pursue Jews, as well as the power to denounce those in authority who did not demonstrate their zeal for collaboration. The Milice became intensely unpopular among fellow Frenchmen of all persuasions, who accurately saw its
members as thugs in the pay of the Germans.[102]

  The Nazis found the work of the Milice exemplary, and commended them in particular for their single-minded pursuit of Jews. The Germans, after all, were strangers to the area and could be fooled, as Michel had demonstrated, but the miliciens were locals with none of the growing moral doubt or increased reluctance displayed by many of the police. And it was local knowledge that led to Michel’s arrest at the end of March.[103]

  He was sitting in a café in the town with a Résistance colleague when four members of the Milice entered and took them to the local HQ in Grenoble. It became clear during questioning that Michel’s interrogators knew about his role in the Résistance, although he naturally denied everything. Strangely, the Milice seemed disinclined to argue. The questioning stopped and the men sat in silence, regarding him with little more than disinterested curiosity.

  The door to the interrogation room opened and a young Résistance member of his group was pushed into the room. He was in bad shape and had obviously been beaten, and Michel knew at once the source of the Milice’s information.

  ‘Do you know him?’ one of the officers asked Michel, pointing at the young man.

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Is this the one?’ they asked the young man, nodding towards Michel.

  ‘No,’ the résistant said firmly. ‘You made a mistake. I don’t know this man.’

  The Milice went into action. The man was thrown to the floor where he was punched and kicked. Two men held him down while a third appeared with a short metal rod. He rammed it into a pressure point between the man’s neck and shoulders and he screamed in pain. He began to babble, confirming Michel’s identity as his Résistance cell leader. Then he lay on the floor sobbing before he was carried out.[104]

  The Milice now turned their attention to Michel. His fake papers no longer served as a cover, although he continued to deny he was a member of the Résistance. He insisted that he did not know the young man, who had implicated him merely to save his own skin.

  His interrogators did not bother to contest his protestations of innocence. ‘We know you are scheduled to have a meeting,’ one said. ‘Save us time and trouble, and yourself a lot of pain, by telling us when and where.’

  At first, Michel denied all knowledge of any meeting, but he had already seen what was in store for him if he continued to keep silent. ‘Their information was correct. The meeting was scheduled for five o’clock that afternoon. We had a rule that if any individual was more than five minutes late for a rendezvous the others must scatter. I needed to gain time - delay the arrival of the Milice until after the deadline.’ He told them he knew nothing of any meeting.

  At first the Milice merely intensified their questioning, and then made a series of physical threats, culminating with a beating. ‘Just tell us where the meeting is and when. Save yourself unnecessary pain.’

  Michel pretended to give in and began to talk, naming the place and time. He knew that the next step would be torture, and was unsure how he would react. He reasoned that he would gain enough time to ensure that the meeting would be abandoned if he sent them on a false trail. ‘There’s to be a meeting at the station at five,’ he said, slowly. The Milice demanded names. Michel pretended to be reluctant to give these and was encouraged to speak with the threat of another beating. He gave them half a dozen unconnected first names.

  ‘What are their family names?’

  ‘We don’t use family names.’

  ‘Give us a description.’

  A fantasy description of every one of the half dozen was forced from him, and he gave a convincing performance. The meeting had genuinely been set for five, but far away from the station.

  He was locked in a dark room where he contemplated the return of the Milice from their wild goose chase. He had sent violent and dangerous men on a false trail, and when they discovered the truth they would come for him to vent their anger. He vividly recalled the precision with which one of the miliciens had used the metal rod on the young résistant, and the man’s unearthly screaming. ‘All I knew for certain was that I would be tortured soon, and I wondered how I would take it. Would I be able to stand it, how would I react, would I talk, would I break down? I tried to prepare myself. We cannot evaluate or judge ourselves unless we go through certain experiences. I had learned in the Résistance that strong men who looked the embodiment of heroism, who talked big, could fall apart at the first sign of danger. While seventeen-year-old girls, little frail wisps of things, could be so very brave. There were weak-looking men who never cracked under torture, and tough guys who wept and broke in the first moments. There was no pattern, no rule.’

  He was brought back to the interrogation chamber to face his persecutors once again. There was a distinct change of atmosphere. The men seemed settled into a calm, deadly anger, and their body language suggested they had resigned themselves to a late night of hard work. Their leader said they had checked Michel’s papers and determined that they were false. They had gone to the place he had told them about and found no one. So they would have to start all over again. They wanted to know everything about him and his Résistance activities. And he could start by telling them his real name.

  Michel repeated what he had originally told them. They waited, almost politely, for him to finish and then one of them moved towards him. ‘Come on,’ Michel said quietly. ‘You’re stronger here - show your strength! I promise not to defend myself. I am ready for you. You can do it - go ahead!’

  The man stopped, momentarily uncertain of how to proceed. He looked back at his colleagues for support. There was a moment of hesitation before they moved upon him as a single being. They punched and kicked him, shouting obscenities. One pushed a thumb between his neck and collarbone and the pain was so great he thought he would pass out. He cried out and they stopped briefly to question him.

  ‘Tell us who you are! We want your true identity now!’

  He was knocked to the ground and held while his hands and feet were placed in a press. As the screws were slowly tightened they screamed at him to tell them his name. ‘I knew I had to tell them something new. I could not revert to my real name - Michel Kroskof was a condemned Jewish escapee from Les Milles. So I focused all my concentration on inventing a new identity, one that I had to make them think was real and that I wanted to protect.

  ‘Every time I stopped talking they resumed their torture. So the secret was obviously to keep talking, but the only time I was able to think and concentrate on a new story was under torture. I was concentrating so strongly on making up a believable story that I wasn’t talking. So they were applying more and more torture. And then I noticed something that really alarmed me. I did not feel the pain.’

  He not only felt nothing but also showed no pain, so his torturers continued to tighten the screws on the press, slowly crushing the bones in his toes and knuckles. One of the Milice was so frustrated by his victim’s lack of response that he clubbed him a terrific blow on the right shoulder, instantly creating a huge lump he would carry for the rest of his life.

  He heard a distant, angry voice: ‘Merde, he doesn’t show any pain.’

  Oh God, Michel thought, I do not show pain! I do not feel pain! He knew that if he did not react they would kill him. ‘So I began to fake the pain, grimacing in agony. I kept repeating to myself over and over, like a broken record: “Show pain, show pain, show pain!”’

  The need to be seen to react to the torture interfered with the intense concentration on what to say. It took him hours to make up a story plausible enough to tell them when he judged it was time to feign breakdown. Meanwhile, he was smashed in the left eye, which began to swell and close, and he saw his persecutors take out the same steel rod used on his colleague. The rod was applied to pressure points on both shoulders between the neck and the collarbone. ‘But still I felt nothing. The pain never reached me, although now I acted convincingly as if it did.’

  During the six hours of torture and interroga
tion he supplied his interrogators with his identity and activities. He told them he was a Pole by the name of Kowalski who had been in the army and put in a POW camp in Belgium at the beginning of the war. He had escaped and made it to France where he had been reduced to making a living from the black market selling food stamps. He calculated that by confessing to the lesser crime of black-marketeering, he might escape the consequences of the greater crime of being a Jew. He was very convincing, occasionally breaking into long bursts of distraught Polish. ‘I could not prove it, of course, but I had constructed a completely viable false identity they could not disprove.’

  Satisfied that the ‘broken’ man had told everything, the Milice threw him into a large, gloomy room containing a dozen prisoners. ‘I was a mess. The other prisoners couldn’t believe what I was like. They looked at me in horror. They couldn’t believe how I had got into such a terrible state without hearing me scream.’

  The next morning he was moved to a jail in Grenoble. Conditions were predictably awful and prisoners had to tolerate bedbugs, lice and fleas, while crabs lodged in their pubic hair. He remained untreated in jail as he slowly regained his strength and health. His spirit had not been broken, but now he did feel pain, a constant hurt that racked his body from his swollen eye and damaged shoulders to his crushed fingers and toes. He tried to understand what resource he had drawn from to mask the pain of torture. ‘I contemplated the untapped reserves of the human mind.

  The great hidden depths of the brain. I learned from it.’[105]