The Test of Courage: (A Biography of) Michel Thomas (7 page)

III - Exile

In the middle of a busy afternoon at the Language Centre on Fifth Avenue, New York, the secretary of Michel Thomas made the rare exception of interrupting a session in progress to put through an urgent call. She sounded concerned and upset, and announced there was a woman from France on the line long distance. And it was important. Perhaps more than important.

‘Who is it?’ Michel demanded. The interruption broke one of his strict rules, and he was irritated. ‘What does she want?’

‘I don’t know... but you must take the call.’

There was something unusual in the tone of his secretary’s voice, and she was so uncharacteristically demanding that he did not argue. He excused himself and made his way along the corridor to his private office.

‘Hello, Michel Thomas speaking,’ he said softly into the phone.

There was no reply, and at first he thought that the caller had hung up. He was about to replace the phone in its cradle when he heard a series of strange choking noises - a terrible, heart-rending sound of somebody in unbearable emotional pain. And he did not need to hear a voice to identify the person. He felt his own pulse beat faster and a sense of dread took hold of him.

‘Suzanne?’

The reply was a low moan of distress. Michel listened, helpless. There was an attempt at speech but no words came, only a pitiable sobbing.

‘My God, Suzanne - calm down! Please! Calm down! Try to talk to me! Please talk to me!’

He tried to soothe her, but it was useless; Suzanne would attempt to talk and then break down into uncontrollable tears. Nothing could stop the outpouring of anguish from the other end of the line. Every attempt at speech was overwhelmed by outbursts of weeping.

Tm going to put the phone down and call you back in half an hour. Okay? Give you a chance to pull yourself together. And then we can talk. Do you understand?’ The sobbing continued. ‘Suzanne, I’ll call you in half an hour.’

The call had shaken him and disturbed powerful memories. He sat in silence for a long time and did not move. At last he spoke to his secretary over the intercom and told her to apologise and explain to the student that he was incapable of continuing that day. As he waited to call Suzanne back, he rehearsed a hundred soothing phrases, dismissing each one as empty and inadequate. The time crawled by.

It was night in France, a little after ten, when he called. The phone rang and rang but no one answered. Ten minutes later, when he called again, it was off the hook. And it remained off the hook throughout the night, although he continued to dial the number from his home before he finally fell asleep, exhausted. When he called again in the morning the operator told him that the line had been disconnected.

He made his way to the office on foot, a man in mourning. He felt he understood the meaning behind the wordless call: Suzanne was saying goodbye. He was convinced that she was dying and knew it, and had called one last time to remind him of a lifetime of love, and to say farewell. All further attempts by Michel to phone proved fruitless. Letters were returned unopened. He wondered if Suzanne might have gone to a house she owned in Austria, and attempted to track her down there, but without success. A few months later his fears were confirmed when he learned, after contacting friends in Nice, that Suzanne had died. He had lost the great love of his youth.
[29]

Michel Thomas met Suzanne Adler in Vienna in 1937 after he moved there, directly after his visit to Lodz, to attend university on a post-graduate course. He was an intense twenty-three-year-old with an enormous appetite for life, and she was a lively, highly intelligent seventeen-year-old with wavy golden-brown hair. She seemed older than her years and very mature. Suzanne was a relative of Alfred Adler, an early associate and student of Sigmund Freud.

Vienna was a lively and appealing city and Michel was spellbound by it, happy to be studying psychology and philosophy in his beloved German language. He soon made friends and liked to make the rounds of the numerous cafés and concert halls. One young friend, Hans Pohl, had been an early and enthusiastic member of the Nazi Party and SS. An investigation into his background for racial purity, however, disclosed that his mother had Jewish blood. It was an awakening that transformed the young man into an outspoken critic and sworn enemy of the Austrian Nazis. Michel received one of life’s lessons from Pohl: his friend’s parents ran a famous restaurant in the city and he was given the secret recipe for its highly praised and powerfully alcoholic egg-nog.

At first Michel had a collection of girlfriends, but soon after meeting Suzanne he embarked upon a serious involvement. The relationship between them in the first months of student life in Vienna grew stronger by the day, although it was not physical. He was six years older and sexually experienced, while Suzanne was a virgin. ‘This held me back. I had always gone out with girls older and more experienced than myself.’ He was also uncertain whether he wanted to commit himself emotionally to one woman. Suzanne had already fallen in love, but he wavered.

The couple pursued as happy and carefree a life as the times allowed. They followed a student routine in the day and at night made a habit of frequenting the Congo Bar, a club with tented booths and an orchestra where they could dance until the early hours. ‘I adapted very quickly to the life of the city because I found myself in a German-speaking country for the first time since I left Breslau. My experience as a student was eventful in a pleasant and exciting way. The intensity of life during the time spent in the city - the friendliness and ambience - appealed to me immensely, and time flew by. Friendships were easily made, and I felt absolutely great in Vienna.’

As in Bordeaux, he pursued a variety of part-time occupations to make money. He continued to paint pictures on glass, while a jeweller employed him to make a line of miniature gold charms featuring scenes from famous operas. ‘I also helped an impressive old gentleman in his eighties with a long beard who was blind. I read correspondence and newspaper articles in various languages to him and he would dictate replies. It became a productive personal relationship in which we discussed world affairs and politics, and I learned a lot.’

To the north in Germany, Adolf Hitler dominated the nation, while Austria seemed drained of independent political will and floundered under weak, indecisive leadership. ‘As time went on one suspected that something might happen - an invasion by the German Army, perhaps - to make Austria a part of Nazi Germany. But when I discussed this with prominent leaders of the Jewish community - business people and industrialists - they rejected the idea. They felt that it could not happen, and that if it did happen it would not affect them. Whatever political upheaval occurred, the Nuremberg Laws would never be applied in Austria, and certainly not in Vienna.
[30]
They were integrated, accepted - they were Austrians. The Jews in Vienna felt as removed from Nazi Germany as the American Jews in the United States.
“S’wrd schoin zan git”
the Polish Jews in Lodz always said in Yiddish - “Everything will be all right”. And in Vienna it was repeated in German:
“Alles wird schon gut werden”.’

Michel felt that his psychological studies provided him with an insight into the Nazi mentality. Alfred Adler stressed a sense of inferiority, rather than the sexual drive, as the motivating force in human life. He believed that an inferiority complex acquired as a child, combined with excessive compensatory defence mechanisms created to overcome it, formed the basis of psychopathological behaviour. The function of the psychoanalyst was to discover and rationalise such feelings, and to break down the neurotic will to power and dominance they engendered - ranging in means from boasting and bullying to political tyranny. It was an interesting thesis to study in pre-war Vienna, and Adolf Hitler was a classic - if extreme - textbook case.
[31]

The roar of Hitler’s mechanised divisions massing on the border, however, drowned out all such psychological musings. Austrian-born, Hitler had written of the dream of incorporating Austria within a Greater Germany -
Anschluss
- in the opening pages of
Mein Kampf
and it had been Nazi party policy since 1920.
[32]
The idea found growing support inside Austria itself, and not just among Nazi sympathisers. There were many Austrians who accepted
Anschluss
as inevitable
Realpolitik
and sincerely believed that the country, since the loss of its Slav and Hungarian possessions in 1918, had no future without union with Germany.

By early 1938, Hitler felt strong enough to chance his hand. As news spread of the German Army at the border, a massive crowd crammed into the centre of Vienna and surrounded the Chancellery. Inside, figures in swastika armbands were already saluting each other with outstretched hands. Throughout the country local Austrian Nazis seized town halls and government offices.

German troops crossed the border unopposed at daybreak on Saturday, 12 March, and were enthusiastically greeted as saviours rather than invaders. Later the same day Hitler chose to cross the frontier in person at his birthplace, Braunau am Inn, and drove through cheering villages to Linz, the town of his childhood, where he received a hero’s welcome. Tears ran down his face as he was handed the text of a law stating: ‘Austria is a province of the German Reich.’ That night the round-up and arrest of tens of thousands of Hitler’s enemies began.

An ecstatic crowd filled the Heldenplatz and the Ring and waited day and night for the Führer’s triumphant entry into the capital forty-eight hours later. Vienna had been the scene of Hitler’s unhappy, impoverished youth when he eked out a living as a hack artist and lived in a hostel frequented by tramps and drunks. It was the city that had rejected him - the Academy of Fine Arts had twice refused him for lack of talent - and now he was returning as a conquering hero, an Adlerian moment if ever there was one.
[33]

Michel went out on the streets to witness events and found the crowd in the grip of mass hysteria. ‘The Austrians received the Nazis triumphantly, Hitler was welcomed like a Roman emperor. The streets had become human rivers. I can still hear the sound of their chanting:
“Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer... Wir danken unserem Führer... Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!”
- Hail to victory... one people, one nation, one leader! Day and night it went on - and on and on. The enthusiasm was boundless.’ The euphoric atmosphere and the change in the people were unnerving. ‘Suddenly there was this transformation. There had been no great show of support for the Nazis before that I was aware of as a student - I considered Vienna very friendly - but now everyone wore little metal swastikas in their left lapel to show their loyalty. They were for sale on every street corner - not official party badges, just a swastika to show loyalty and express support. Foreigners had to wear the insignia of their country in their lapel, and those who didn’t were exposed as anti-Nazis or Jews. Enemies.’ Typically, Michel wore the Star of David in his lapel, but remained untouched.

A gigantic portrait of Hitler dominated the square in front of the opera house, and Michel heard the senior Roman Catholic prelate, Cardinal Theodor Innitzer, urge the people to support Hitler. The cardinal had greeted the Fuhrer with the sign of the cross and gave assurances that as long as the Church retained its liberties Austrian Catholics - the majority of the country - would become ‘the truest sons of the Third Reich’. The atheist Hitler shook the cardinal’s hand warmly. (Nevertheless, a few months later the cardinal’s palace was sacked by Nazi thugs. Awakened to the true nature of National Socialism, Innitzer spoke against the persecution of the Church - an impotent gesture of independence that was too little too late.)
[34]

‘The excesses were incredible. Suddenly, the Austrians were the worst - worse than the Germans. Overnight they reached the state of hatred it had taken the German nation five years to achieve. Among the most extreme were the Sudeten Germans, who had come to Austria as refugees from Czechoslovakia. Rrutes let loose on the Jewish population. I saw acts of cruelty committed by Austrians against Jews on every street. Their actions even shocked German officers, and I saw them restrain people a number of times.’

It was dangerous for sceptics to be in the streets, but Michel wanted to be everywhere, and Suzanne willingly accompanied him. ‘This is history,’ he told her. ‘These are events that we can only remember if we live them and see them, and not hide by staying at home.’ One of the most painful scenes they witnessed was quiet and undramatic, but it moved them deeply. Within the shadow of the opera house, across from the giant portrait of Hitler, they came across three men gathered around a young woman, shielding her from sight. The woman had lost control and was weeping piteously. ‘Her friends did not want the mob to see that she did not share in the universal joy.’

Day after day hundreds of Jewish men and women were forced on to their hands and knees to scrub the political slogans of the previous regime from pavements and walls with acid. Storm Troopers stood over them while the crowds jeered. Elderly Jews were forced to clean the lavatories and barracks of their new masters, and Michel learned that the scholarly old gentleman whom he helped had been dragged to his knees by his beard and beaten.