The Test of Courage: (A Biography of) Michel Thomas (5 page)

The experiment with private instruction was a success, allowing him to skip a year and pass the stiff entrance tests for the Junkerschule Elisabeth Gymnasium. He excelled at his new school and once again became accepted as a leader through athletics, particularly wrestling. A teacher took the class on extended trips into the mountains and entrusted Michel with half of the group.

By this time, late 1930, the Nazis had become the largest party in the Reichstag, and Adolf Hitler’s extreme nationalism and declared anti-Semitism had been widely adopted. Michel’s classroom neighbour, who shared a desk with him, began to attend school in the full Nazi uniform of the SA Brownshirt movement. He covered the front of his school-books with elaborate patterns of linked swastikas. Michel responded by covering his with the Star of David.

Despite the growing Nazi influence, Michel’s peers continued to follow him as a leader, the only Jew in the school. There was one other boy at school who, although born a Christian, was known to be the son of converts. ‘All the boys saw him as a Jew and picked on him, and whenever I saw it I stepped in to save him. I never talked to him, because I didn’t like him, but I stuck up for him. Personally, I never had any trouble. I was accepted because I was not a follower. In class if anything derogatory was said about the Jews by the teachers I stood up and challenged it. I was never a Jew who was kicked around.’

It seemed to Michel that one of the major reasons for the advent of Nazism was the German educational system. It was designed to produce a highly educated elite, while neglecting the education of the proletariat who were expected to be subservient and deferential. ‘The Germans as a whole - the masses - had a very low self-image. This
Minderwertigkeitsgefühl
- literally “lesser worthiness” - expressed a class inferiority that was apparent to everyone. The maid would refer to her employer as gnädige Frau - “merciful lady” - and so on. All those who rose to power with Hitler had lived under and accepted
Minderwertigkeitsgefühl
. These followers who had resigned themselves to lives of the “less worthy” suddenly discovered overnight that they belonged to a new Aryan race of supermen.

‘And something else. The intellectual community as a whole was thoroughly prostituted and fell down on their knees before the Nazis. The failure of those with the intellectual power and moral conscience to stand up to Hitler greatly strengthened him. The masses saw the people they had always looked up to embrace Nazism. So Germany became a nation of cowards led by social misfits to believe they were a super race. And the phrase heard everywhere that dominated daily life was
“Führer, befehl, wirfolgen Dir!”
- “Fuhrer, you order and we follow you”.’

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.
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‘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.
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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.
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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 happier 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.
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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.