The Test of Courage: (A Biography of) Michel Thomas (61 page)

The ruling seemed to have nothing to do with freedom of speech, but supported the overweening and uncontested power of the press. The might and money of the
Los Angeles Times
- owned by the enormously rich Chicago Tribune group - had been wielded against a man attempting to salvage his good name. No attempt at apology had been made, no right of reply offered. In a town where there is effectively only one newspaper, there was no other recourse open to Michel but lengthy and expensive litigation. And now even that had been denied.

In essence, the court’s judgement stated that the article was defamatory, but not intentionally so - and was constitutionally protected, as it merely stated opinion rather than provable facts. ‘Implications that Thomas lied about his past would be defamatory... A reasonable reader or juror might conclude, after reading the article and considering the various points of view presented, that Thomas had in fact lied about his past. But no reasonable juror could find that Defendants intended to convey that impression.’
[297]

This makes no sense and seems contrary to simple logic. By the exclusion of documents, and the omission of facts, the whole thrust of the article was that Michel was lying. Otherwise, there was no peg for the article to hang upon.

In regard to the malice, the judgement declared: ‘Dr Kraus’s testimony regarding his conversation with Defendant reporter Rivenburg does not itself prove malice. Plaintiff can argue that malice has been shown by Defendant Rivenburg’s failure to quote Dr Kraus without using the actual testimony of Dr Kraus.’ Once again, if Michel was allowed to argue malice, the article had to be defamatory.

With the motion to strike granted, the
Los Angeles Times
was entitled to be awarded attorney’s fees. The paper’s lawyers immediately submitted a bill for $120,000. The Court has since ruled that the amount is ‘clearly excessive’ and that the lawyers for the paper had ‘engaged in rampant multiple billing, billing up to four separate items for a single meeting or review of a single draft or document. Padding in the form of inefficient or duplicate efforts is not subject to compensation.’ Defence counsel was ‘Ordered to submit new documentation of hours, limited to time spent and costs incurred on the special motion to strike alone, with all duplicate billing eliminated.’ This highly unusual ruling was a humiliation for the lawyers representing the
Los Angeles Times
, who had been publicly reprimanded for padding their legal costs.
[298]

Subsequent appeals have been denied. ‘I now feel that even my friends greet me with doubt in their eyes,’ Michel said. ‘Most hurtful is that the Jewish community think I’m a liar. I have finally felt the hundredth blow of the whip.’

The reference to the hundredth blow was an allusion to his friend who had been interned in Dachau before the war and whose subsequent written account was not believed - something made more painful because it was contemptuously rejected by the émigré Jewish community in Paris and New York. He had killed himself in despair. And now Michel was not believed and questioned over his own experiences at Dachau, similarly doubted and rejected by members of the Jewish community, with no means at his disposal to correct the record.

A great many people have come to Michel Thomas’s support. Over three hundred and fifty people signed a letter of protest to John Puerner, publisher of the
Los Angeles Times
, asking that the paper consider the evidence they have been shown and publish an article setting the record straight. The signatories include scores of prominent persons from the world of business, law, diplomacy, academia and the arts. Among them are Flint Whitlock, author of the definitive history of the 45th Infantry Division campaign in Europe in the Second World War; Mortimer Zuckerman, owner of
US News and World Report
; and former United States ambassador, Walter Curley. Michel’s celebrity students who have sent letters of protest include Carl Reiner, Emma Thompson, Raquel Welch, and Warren Beatty.
New York Times
columnist, Anthony Lewis, wrote ‘The case of Michel Thomas is indeed troubling.’
[299]
The Friends of Michel Thomas have produced a website -
http://www.michelthomas.org
- reproducing all of the documentary evidence supporting his life story. But not a word about the controversy has appeared in the
Los Angeles Times
.

A great newspaper has demeaned itself. The
Los Angeles Times
, in its own published code of ethics, claims: ‘Our duty is to the truth. We pledge to seek and report the truth with honesty, accuracy, fairness and courage... We will deal with people fairly and compassionately. In every case, we should strive to achieve balance and fairness in all reporting and news decisions. Fairness should be used in sourcing, writing, editing, photo play, layout and headline writing. Getting all sides of the story is the minimum requirement.’

This code has been trampled in regard to Michel Thomas. To ignore the evidence supporting his life is to express contempt for those who suffered through a terrible time in history, and shows an utter lack of respect for those who risked their lives to fight the evil that caused it. Michel survived concentration camps and fierce combat, despite the efforts of Hitler, the Nazis, and Vichy collaborators, only to see a lifetime’s commitment contemptuously mocked in the press. But if his well-documented story is not to be believed, then whose is? What combat veteran or Holocaust survivor can meet a greater standard of proof? What evidence will ever be sufficient for the sceptics?

A great wrong has been perpetrated. As a tidal wave of fresh hatred engulfs the world, Michel Thomas’s example of a single man’s struggle not to be overwhelmed by a previous deluge of evil offers hope. The story of his life records something more than survival, courage and heroics - it provides a portrait of a warrior against hate.
[300]

Postscript by Michel Thomas

The LORD said, ‘What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.’’ Genesis 4:10

I can hear my brothers’ blood. I can hear the voice, the screams of the blood of my parents, my family, the blood of six million Jews, of more than one and a half million children. The Bible also says that ‘He who saves one life, saves the world. He who destroys one life, destroys the world.’ I also think of a quotation from Stalin: ‘The death of one human being, one child, is a tragedy; the death of millions, mere statistics’.

The civilized world decided to set up a conference - the Evian Conference - in order to find a way, a so-called ‘solution’ to the ‘Jewish Problem’. Suddenly the Jews, the existence of Jews, presented a problem to the world. Thirty-two nations convened to find a way to save Jewish lives. No solution was found. Nothing. The only thing that the conference showed was that the doors of all those nations and the whole world were slammed from the outside and not from the inside. It was at that time, after the Evian Conference, that Hitler realised that the world did not care; that there was no room for Jews.

The Germans had not thought of genocide in the beginning. They thought first only of making Germany ‘judenrein’, of having German-occupied European countries free of Jews. But the failure of the Evian Conference to find a solution prompted the Germans to set up the ‘Final Solution’. Hitler believed that the world would look away with total indifference. And he was right: he interpreted the silence of the world as acquiescence to his ‘Final Solution’.

There was only one place in the world where the doors were not slammed. By fluke, that little place didn’t have any doors to slam. It was one section of one city - not even a country - the international section of the city of Shanghai. To land or arrive there, to get into that section, one did not need any visa or permit. So only those families, who by whatever chance managed to know about it and to get out in time, found a safe haven.

All those who had family in the United States, who had all requirements for immigration, all affidavits, would have to wait for a number of the US quota system at that crucial time. Jews who had all their documents and guarantees were not allowed in and were put into gas chambers waiting for a number to come up. My own family was sacrificed on the altar of American quota numbers.

So often I hear the question: what could have been done in order to save human lives? How often do I hear that one should have bombed railroad tracks? This is nonsense. Railroad tracks can be repaired very quickly, and there are other methods of transportation. The very easy, simple methods of saving human lives was to give passes, visas or papers to open any door. The Japanese counsel in Kaunas, Lithuania, when he saw what was happening, started issuing Japanese visas to Jews. The stamp of a visa into a passport MEANT LIFE. He saved lives, I don’t care how many, whether dozens of lives, hundreds of lives, thousands of lives. There was another counsel in Bordeaux, from Portugal, who gave stamps of visas, who saved lives. One talks about Wallenberg. How did he save lives, but by giving stamps, by giving papers? Whether he was authorised to do it or not, he took the initiative to do it - and saved lives.

For the first time in history, the Jews were not persecuted because of the religion of Judaism, but because of ‘racial’ persecution, ‘blood’ persecution. Recently I ran across the words of Jean Kahn, the president of the Jewish community in France. In talking about the Papon trial, he referred to the ‘shameful face of France - with its exclusions leading to the extermination of men, women and children because of their religion.’ That is wrong. For almost 2,000 years, Jews suffered religious persecution and religious martyrdom. But this time it was against the Jewish people, not against the Jewish religion.

I also make a sharp distinction between martyrdom and physical annihilation. The world looks on the victims of the Holocaust - the six million Jews who were slaughtered - as martyrs. I don’t see them - I don’t see my parents, my family members who were slaughtered - as martyrs. Because to be martyred, one suffers physical death, but one’s belief system, one’s faith in God and humanity, one’s hopes, and one’s inner self remain unscathed. All those who were exterminated were deprived of hope, belief, and trust in humanity-a tearing out of the inner self- the soul - that far surpasses physical death. This not simply a crime against humanity. This is a hideous sin - and historically will remain the unpardonable sin.

It is very important at this point to talk about France. France is the homeland, the country of freedom - liberty, equality, and fraternity (These ideals were erased and replaced by the Vichy government with work, family, and fatherland.) The homeland of ‘le droit de I’homme’, of human rights and human dignity. Let us look at a country which was divided during the war. When France collapsed in 1940, the demarcation line separated the northern part of France, with Paris, being occupied by Germans, and the southern part with a new capital at Vichy. The Vichy government was a legal government, which was officially neutral. Vichy France independently set up about 30 concentration camps, and starting in October of 1940 passed laws against the Jews, more severe than the Nuremberg laws of Hitler’s Germany, expropriating their property and prohibiting the exercice of many professions. Vichy France was the only unoccupied country in Europe that carried out massive and frequent raids, that dragged Jews out of hotels, restaurants, hospitals, trains and buses. It was the only country that set up deportation camps, after it had rounded up those families so they could be loaded into cattle cars in abominable conditions. Everything was taken away. 76,000 Jews and 10,700 children were deported to Drancy and Auschwitz. And not by the Germans. The Vichy government had to send a request to Eichmann in Berlin for permission to deport 4,000 children, who had been separated by force from their parents, to Auschwitz, where they were gassed upon arrival. All this was done by Vichy France, a neutral country, under the very eyes, ears, and noses of a number of embassies which chose to remain silent, including the United States embassy.

Looking at the indifference of the civilized world, I offer another quote from the Bible: ‘Thou shalt not idly stand by. ‘It also admonishes, ‘Thou shalt not follow the crowd, the multitude to do wrong, to do evil.’

I want to draw attention to the two sides of France: Vichy France and France of the French Résistance. I have a very-deep love for France and for the French, because I found among them human beings of the highest quality, the highest standards, the highest moral, ethical and human values. I love and admire France and the French passionately. But unfortunately, there are also sombre pages of French history, a history in which the Vichy government clearly committed abominable crimes against humanity. It is crucial that France face its own history: to be able to see it, and to know it, and to stop hiding it. In the words of Jacques Chirac, ‘To recognise the errors of the past and the errors committed by the state and not to hide the dark hours of our history, that is plainly the way to defend a vision of man, of his freedom and dignity.’

There are things that I have to live with, because there are things that don’t leave me, that I cannot forget. We are exhorted to ‘remember’, but one can only remember what one knows. And one easily forgets what one has chosen not to know. I want to let it out of me, because the blood of my brothers and sisters cries out in me.