The Test of Courage: (A Biography of) Michel Thomas (66 page)

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Authors: Christopher Robbins

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  1. LA Herald Express
    report: The headline of the story ran: THRILLING TRAP OF NAZI WHO ORDERED DOOM OF YANKS.
    Los Angeles Evening Herald Express
    , 23 November 1949.
  2. Stars & Stripes
    report: The headline of the story ran: EX-AGENT TELLS HOW HE CAUGHT MALMÉDY CHIEF.
    Stars & Stripes
    , 17 December 1949.
  3. Peiper’s diploma: See Reynolds,
    Devil’s Adjutant
    , p 259.
  4. Mahl’s letter: The letter, which is in the possession of Michel Thomas, was sent from Landsberg Fortress on 26 December 1949.
  5. Knittel’s letter: The letter was sent from War Criminals prison No. 1, Landsberg/Lech, 5 January 1950. National Archives, Record Group 338, Entry 147, Box 57.
  6. Biscari massacre: The massacre has received scant attention over the years. Even in the detailed, and excellent, history of the 45th Division -
    Rock of Anzio
    - it receives only two paragraphs, and is described as ‘two unfortunate incidents that reflected negatively on the Thunderbirds’. Whitlock,
    Rock of Anzio
    , p 50. For a full account of the trial, see Weingartner, ‘Massacre at Biscari: Patton and an American War Crime’,
    The Historian
    , November 1989.
  7. Red-jacket team: Condemned men at Landsberg were obliged to wear regulation red jackets.
  8. Knittel’s release: According to Hans Joohs, Rnittel returned to Ulm and worked for a company that manufactured trucks. He died in 1976.
  9. Peiper’s release: Peiper died in a fire-bomb attack on his home in Traves, in the Hautes Saone, in 1976. For an account of his life and his murder, see Reynolds,
    The Devil’s Adjutant
    , pp 259-69.
  10. Tecate experiment: Laura Huxley, interview with the author, 5 May 1999.
  11. MCA stock: MCA went through corporate reorganisation on 1 September 1959 when all of its subsidiaries were merged into MCA Inc. The original Nine Old Men, who owned twelve hundred shares in the old corporations, now owned 170,400 each. The new stock’s par value was seventeen cents. When the company was formally listed for the first time on the New York Stock Exchange three months later it began trading at $17.50 a share. Within a year the stock hit $38 a share. When Jules Stein died in 1981 he left in excess of two hundred million dollars - from an original investment of five thousand dollars. McDougal,
    The Last Mogul
    , pp 254,423.
  12. Hutchins’s letter: The letter was sent from the Fund for the Republic, New York, to Michel on 4 February 1959. Isidor Rabi was an Austrian-born US physicist who developed a highly accurate technique for measuring the nuclear magnetic movements of atoms; Niels Bohr was a Danish physicist whose work formed the basis for modern atomic theory; Werner Heisenberg was a German physicist who was one of the principal architects of quantum mechanics; Paul Tillich was an American Lutheran minister, theologian and academic whose work related Christianity to contemporary life; J. Robert Oppenheimer was the American physicist in charge of the US atomic bomb programme, who later opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb; and Jacques Maritain was a French Roman Catholic theologian interested in applying the methods of St Thomas Aquinas to contemporary social problems.
  13. Architectural plans: The firm of architects was Victor Gruen Associates, a company based in Los Angeles with offices all over America.
  14. Prince Rainier’s reply: The letter, from the Palais de Monaco, is dated 6 February 1959.
  15. Rainier’s real estate deal: See Parsons,
    Los Angeles Herald Examiner
    , 26 April 1963.
  16. Barry’s death: Michel was reluctant to have the story of Barry’s death included in the book. ‘It seems so unbelievable. I don’t expect people to believe it, but that is what happened.’
  17. Marvin Adelson: Interview with the author, 19 March 1999.
  18. Pittsburgh University: Letter from chancellor, Wesley Posvar, to Herman Rahn of the Hudson Institute, January 1981.
  19. CIA rejects method: Charles Morin, interview with the author, 20 May 1999.
  20. Letter from principal: Dr Andréw Anderson, principal of the George Washington Carver Junior High School, to Edward Mead of the Ford Foundation, 16 May 1969.
  21. School experiment: The week of French instruction at the George Washington Carver Junior High School was used as a case study in a paper by Dr Garth Sorenson, chairman of Educational Counselling at the Graduate School of Education at the University of California Los Angeles. Sorenson, previously a self-confessed defeatist in learning French before contact with Michel, wrote a paper on schools of thought on the improvement of public education. See, ‘On the Use of the Case Study in Developing Better Instructional Procedures’.
  22. Professor’s report: The report was written by J. Michael Fay, instructional co-ordinator at the George Washington Carver Junior High School, April 1969.
  23. L’Enfant Sauvage
    : For Truffaut’s interest in educational experiments in teaching difficult children, and the evolution of the film, see Baecque & Toubiana,
    Truffaut
    , pp 260-5.
  24. Truffaut letter: Letter to Helen Scott, 9 July 1973. See Truffaut,
    Correspondence 1945-1984
    , pp 595-6.
  25. Selznick’s Memo: Selznick,
    Memo from David O. Selznick
    , Viking, 1972.
  26. Signed Truffaut photo: The photo hangs in the offices of Michel Thomas Language Systems in Beverly Hills, California.
  27. Marriage: Rabbi Dr Charles Steckel was the rabbi at the ceremony. He had been a friend of the family in Breslau and had stimulated Michel’s interest in archaeology as a teenager. The rabbi had left Germany for Zagreb, in Yugoslavia, and escaped to Istanbul during the war. He moved to Budapest in 1942 posing as a German Lutheran priest and worked with Baoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved the lives of many Jews by issuing travel documents. Steckel moved to America after the war and settled in Pasadena, California. Michel found him through a chance item published in the newspaper. ‘It was meaningful to me to be married by him. There was a connection to the family and the old world in Breslau.’
  28. Alice Burns: Interview with the author, Los Angeles, 8 May 1999.
  29. Birth of children: Gurion was born on 28 November 1978; a daughter, Micheline Freidessa - a name created by combining the first names of Michel’s mother and aunt - was born on 16 February 1980.
  30. Barbie hearing: Michel Thomas gave preliminary evidence to the juge d’instruction in Lyon in April 1984.
  31. Confrontation with Barbie: ‘Barbie Confronted’, Le Matin, 21 December 1983; Michel’s quotation on Barbie from the
    New York Times
    , 24 May 1987.
  32. Barbie recruitment: US Nazi hunter Allan Ryan prepared a two-hundred-page study on Barbie for the Justice Department. Its findings were first made public in a press conference at the US Department of Justice, Washington DC, on 16 August 1983. Ryan, Klaus Barbie and the United States Government.
  33. Barbie’s past: Agent’s monthly report, 15 September 1948. Quoted in Simpson,
    Blowback
    , p 189.
  34. CIC rationalisation: Ryan,
    Klaus Barbie
    , p 69.
  35. Barbie’s CIC activities: Top-secret report by Lt Col Ellington Golden, commanding officer of HO 970th CIC Detachment, 11 December 1947. Quoted in Simpson,
    Blowback
    , p 185.
  36. ‘Case closed’: The report is quoted in Ryan,
    Quiet Neighbors
    , p 307.
  37. Barbie in South America: See Ryan,
    Quiet Neighbors
    , pp 275-9; Bower,
    Klaus Barbie
    , pp 205-24.
  38. Bolivia’s internment camps: See ‘Nazi Impenitent, Agent Americain, Homme D’Affaires Bolivien’, Jean-Marc Theolleyre,
    Le Monde
    , 16 May 1987.
  39. Manhunt in Nice: See Zuccotti,
    The Italians and the Holocaust
    , p 89.
  40. Beate Klarsfeld: Her words are quoted by Paris,
    Unhealed Wounds
    , p188.
  41. ‘I did my duty’: The quotation appeared in the
    New York Times
    , 14 February 1983.
  42. ‘They said nothing’: See Linklater et al,
    Nazi Legacy
    , p 113.
  43. Eyewitness account of raid: The farmhand was Julien Favet, then aged twenty-four.
  44. Barbie telex: The telex survived, and was marked Lyon, 8.10 p.m., 6 April 1944.
  45. Vergès’s wife: The lawyer’s bigamous marriage was to Djamala Bouhirid, an Algerian Communist sentenced to death for terror bombings. She was spared execution and eventually released after a campaign by André Froissard - who happened to be one of the
    résistants
    tortured by Barbie in 1943.
  46. Jacques Vergès: For a detailed account of Vergès’s life and an analysis of his politics, see Paris,
    Unhealed Wounds
    , passim.
  47. ‘Paltry underling’: See Finkielkraut,
    Remembering In Vain
    , p 3.
  48. ‘Everyone would have laughed’: Finkielkraut appeared in the documentary on Barbie by Marcel Ophuls, interviewed on the court house steps in Lyon while awaiting the verdict on 14 July 1987. Ophuls,
    Hotel Terminus
    .
  49. Barbie’s fate: Klaus Barbie died of leukaemia in September 1991.
  50. Herbert Morris: Interview with the author, Los Angeles, 23 February 1999.
  51. UCLA summer course: The flier for the summer experiment, which was part of UCLA’s extension programme, went out in April 1990, and the courses were scheduled for 20 August through September.
  52. Experiment cancelled: Letter to Michel from Gary Penders, director of the Summer Sessions, UCLA, 10 August 1990.
  53. Impregnable educational establishment: The British remain similarly impermeable. A letter from an enthusiastic publisher extolling the virtues of Michel’s system sent to David Blunkett, Secretary of Education, received a stock reply from a civil servant. ‘Whilst the Department sets the framework for teaching in school through the National Curriculum, it is for schools and teachers to determine how to deliver it... We will keep your letter on our files.’ Janet Haworth, Curriculum & Assessment Division, Department of Education and Employment, 18 March 1998.
  54. Gold medal: The medal was presented to Michel on behalf of the society by M. Raoul Aglion, Ministre Plenipotentiaire, on 16 January 1982.
  55. Emma Thompson: Interview with the author, London, 23 November 1998.
  56. BBC documentary:
    The Language Master
    , first shown on BBC2 on 23 March 1997.
  57. Michel Thomas’s biography was published in the United States as
    Test of Courage,
    by The Free Press, 1999.
  58. Fragments
    , by Binjamin Wilkomirski, Schocken Books, New York, 1996.
  59. Deliver us From the Devil: Exorcism and Deliverance in America
    , by Roy Rivenburg, Class of 1985, Columbia University, Graduate School of Journalism.
  60. Mission statement of World Journalism Institute and history of God’s World Publications, www.worldji.com
  61. Email from author to Bret Israel, Editor of Southern California Living,
    Los Angeles Times
    , 26 March 2001.
  62. Sworn Declaration from Theodore C. Kraus, Ph.D., Cheshire, Connecticut, 14 December 2001.
  63. Sworn Declaration from Herbert Morris, Emeritus Professor of Law & Philosophy at the University of California, LA, UCLA; Former Dean of the Division of Humanities and Interim Provost of the College of Letters and Science at UCLA, Los Angeles, California, 16 November, 2001.
  64. Email from author to Roy Rivenburg, reporter for
    Los Angeles Times
    , 26 March 2001.
  65. Bill introduced to Congress by Senator Helen Gehagan Douglas, HR 5255, 80th Congress, 2nd Session.
  66. Email from author to Roy Rivenburg, 28 March 2001.
  67. Email from author to Roy Rivenburg, 4 April 2001.
  68. Larger than Life by Roy Rivenburg,
    Los Angeles Times
    , 15 April 2001. Copyright prevents the reproduction of the article in full.
  69. Response to Story on Michel Thomas: six letters were published in the Southern California Living section of the
    Los Angeles Times
    , 1 May 2001. They were all heavily edited by the editors of that section, rather than the editor in charge of Letters to the Editor.
  70. Sworn Declaration from Conrad R. McCormick, Sierra Vista, Arizona, 8 January 2002.
  71. Letter from Karlene Goller, attorney for the
    Los Angeles Times
    , to Anthony Glassman, May 3 2001.

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