Michel Thomas

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Michel Thomas , born Moniek Kroskof (born February 3, 1914 in Łódź , † January 8, 2005 in New York , NY ) was a polyglot , linguist and language teacher.

Life

He spent his childhood in Germany and France. With the rise of Adolf Hitler , the period of persecution began. He spent two years in labor camps, constantly afraid of being deported to Germany. He fled and joined the French Resistance , was caught and survived the interrogation by Klaus Barbie and the torture by the Gestapo .

At the beginning of May 1945 Thomas took part in the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp as a member of the Counter Intelligence Corps of the 45th Infantry Division . In search of material that the SS had carried away in the last days of the war, he managed to find an important document on May 20, 1945 in the Josef Wirth paper, cardboard and corrugated cardboard factory in Freimann near Munich, namely the NSDAP's central archive, which contains 8 million membership cards that had been taken there to crush it. Hans Huber, the managing director of the paper mill, delayed the destruction. Robert Wolfe , the long-time director of the US National Archives NARA , praised Thomas' contribution to the clarification of the structure of the NSDAP and Nazi crimes with the words:

"The success that the victors had in punishing war criminals and denazification of Germany was based in large part on possession and access to the personnel files of the Nazi party that CIC agent Michel Thomas had discovered, identified and reported."

However, it was not until October 1945 that the occupation authorities recognized the importance of the documents and saved the documents accordingly. The circumstances of the failed destruction of the Nazi files also appear in a story by Stefan Heym .

After the war, Thomas developed a new language teaching method that found a number of followers.

From August 1965 he was briefly in a relationship with the actress Christiane Schmidtmer , whom he met at the Chateau Marmont Hotel in Los Angeles .

At the end of his career, his clients included diplomats, industrialists, and celebrities such as Raquel Welch , Barbra Streisand , Emma Thompson , Woody Allen and Grace Kelly (who had to learn French quickly after her engagement to Rainier III (Monaco) ). Thomas guaranteed his students that they would never forget what he had taught and, in the opposite case, offered free refresher courses.

literature

  • Christopher Robbins: Courage beyond words. The many lives and languages ​​of Michel Thomas. Holocaust witness, Nazi hunter, language teacher to the stars. McGraw-Hill, New York 2008, ISBN 978-0-07-149911-8 . (Previously published as The Test of Courage .)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christopher Robbins: Test of Courage: The Michel Thomas Story- New York Free Press / Simon & Schuster, 2000, ISBN 978-0-7432-0263-3 . New edition: Courage Beyond Words, New York McGraw-Hill 2007, ISBN 0-07-149911-3
  2. ^ Official documents from the French Bureau des Anciens Combattants
  3. ↑ Julian Nundy: Barbie Prosecutor Demands Life Term , Chicago Tribune, July 1, 1987
  4. ^ Discovery of Party Documents in the Josef Wirth paper mill in Freimann by 45th CIC Detachment, May 20, 1945. Weekly Counterintelligence Report # 16. In: Seventh Army, Western Military District, Annex No 2, Part 4 of 8, CIC Reports / Reporting Section G-2, period 20 May-20 June 1945. NARA .
  5. ↑ Quoted from Malte Herwig: Flakhelfer . 2013, cf. Footnote 31.
  6. ↑ Malte Herwig: Die Flakhelfer: How Hitler's youngest party members became Germany's leading democrats. DVA, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-641-09116-3 , chap. 1.
  7. ↑ Stefan Heym: A true story. In: (ders.): The cannibals and other stories. Leipzig 1953, pp. 51-76.
  8. ↑ Clare Wrathrall: Brush Up Your Bad Language. Daily Telegraph , December 11, 2004, accessed November 3, 2010 .
personal data
SURNAME Thomas, Michel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kroskof, Moniek
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish polyglot, linguist and language teacher
DATE OF BIRTH February 3, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Łódź
DATE OF DEATH January 8, 2005
Place of death New York , NY