The Test of Courage: (A Biography of) Michel Thomas (16 page)

The inclusion of all the Jews in France in Nazi plans for the Final Solution called for ever greater co-operation between Germany and Vichy. The German occupation authorities in Paris would have found it difficult to carry out its anti-Jewish programme without the active help of the French administration or the police; in Vichy, of course, it would have been impossible. And as the war in Russia continued to go badly for the Germans, manpower and resources grew ever more stretched. They came to rely increasingly on French enforcement of their anti-Semitic policies, which were growing more violent and extreme by the day.

Only Vichy could identify, segregate, arrest and imprison Jews in the Unoccupied Zone. A census of all Jews south of the Demarcation Line had been completed the previous year with the result that they had been under police surveillance ever since. Foreign Jews were subjected to periodic police inspections and round-ups that either resulted in internment or sent them into forced residence where their every move was monitored.

Faced with the necessity of producing enormous numbers of foreign Jews to fulfil its quota, Vichy placed even more obstacles in the way of emigration. Regional prefects in the Unoccupied Zone were given the order to transport all foreign Jews who had entered France after 1 January 1956 to camps in the Occupied Zone by the end of the summer, and to cancel all exit visas. Prime Minister Laval later explained to newsmen, ‘It would be a violation of the armistice to allow Jews to go abroad for fear they should take up arms against the Germans.’
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Police, soldiers and even firemen went into action in pre-dawn raids in every department of the Unoccupied Zone. The round-ups were carried out without respite over a ten-day period with the order that ‘personnel act without brutality but with the greatest firmness’.
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A report on the round-ups prepared for the president admitted that there had, in fact, been brutality, but concluded: ‘they will considerably help clear the air in the Unoccupied Zone. From all quarters, for a long time, we have been receiving complaints about the illicit activities of these foreign Jews: anti-government activity, clandestine trade, black market etc.’

Deportations were duly announced, and only a shortage of trains delayed them for three months. In the meantime, the code d’hôtage was made even more severe on direct orders from Hitler. Not only would hostages be executed for future killings, but a further five hundred Jews and Communists would be handed over to Himmler for deportation. Reserves for this purpose were to be kept interned.

The train that took more than a hundred Jews from Drancy to Auschwitz in third-class carriages for the first deportation was the modest beginning of an ambitious programme. Eichmann ordered four thousand more Jews to follow, and they were duly sent without protest from Vichy. There were further delays because of a shortage of rolling stock. From now on deportees would be packed into freight and cattle cars, an arrangement that had the advantage of needing fewer guards.

It was against this background that Michel returned to Les Milles, now transformed into its final manifestation: a warehouse for human beings awaiting death. Locals in and around Aix en Provence nicknamed it
l’abbatoir
- the slaughterhouse. Originally an internment camp for enemy aliens, then a transit camp - as Michel had previously known it - Les Milles would now deal only in deportation. Deportees were sent first to Drancy, the camp outside Paris, and then on to Auschwitz.

And yet Michel and his group were in high spirits when they were first driven through its gates. The fraternity of the ten - the two fists - felt that the camp offered opportunities for escape, or even an uprising. Michel was once again close to his underground contacts in Marseille and hoped to enlist clandestine support. ‘We entered the deportation camp like young lions transferred to a new cage, eager to sniff around every area of the enclosure, searching for a weak spot that might offer the possibility of escape.’

The men met after their initial reconnaissance to pool intelligence. The large, open yard was enclosed completely by a high wall topped with barbed wire. The camp gate, adjacent to a spur of railroad tracks connected to the main line, was heavily guarded. Any hope of escape through or over the fence, or via the gate, had to be ruled out. Security at Les Milles had also been strengthened at the beginning of August 1942, when municipal police reorganised inmates and guards received new orders to shoot troublemakers after three shouted warnings.
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The men were allocated their places in the buildings that served as barracks. They were provided with a list of basic belongings that were to be packed at all times in readiness for ‘relocation’. Everything else was to be left behind. ‘This for any thinking person meant a trip to death. You were not allowed money, extra clothes or jewellery - it all had to be turned over to the French authorities.’

There were as many as twenty dilapidated structures in the camp, but inmates were mostly housed in two grim brick buildings, each floor of which was divided into a series of enormous rooms. The two buildings were connected on the second floor by an enclosed wooden shaft that had been sealed at both ends, denying access from one building to the other. A small shack, also locked and seemingly unused, stood between the two buildings in the main courtyard. The discouraging conclusion of the group was that security was basic but formidable: there was no visible weak link or obvious means of escape.

The men discussed the mood of the camp and reported on conversations with various inmates. These suggested a general sense of disbelief and an inability to accept the danger of the situation. The Vichy government fed the inmates’ illusions by speaking of ‘relocation’ rather than ‘deportation’. ‘Too many of the victims of Les Milles grasped at this wisp of hope because it was difficult for them to accept the total collapse of human morality. Even if the Germans were capable of annihilating an entire people and culture, it was impossible to believe that the Vichy French would join forces with them so completely. As an individual, no matter how clear the evidence that massive slaughter was under way, it was impossible to accept that it was happening to you - that you had been trapped in the web, that you were dumped in the middle of a system that would extinguish your existence with cold efficiency. It was simply impossible to allow yourself to believe this. Disbelief was the mind’s first line of defence, and this made it difficult to persuade anyone to support the Résistance. If you were still alive and still in France, why take risks?’

The group of ten prided themselves on not sharing these illusions. They knew that ‘relocation’ meant ‘deportation’, and that both were synonyms for death. They also knew from their various experiences in different slave-labour camps that Vichy would go about its task with enthusiasm and efficiency, and intended to resist their fate to the end. They reasoned that if escape proved impossible they could try to convince their fellow inmates to stage a massive riot. They might die in the struggle, but could at least attract the attention of the world. ‘Death was so close on that first night in the deportation camp that we felt willing to offer ourselves as a sacrifice in order to save thousands more who were doomed to follow us on this journey to oblivion. We curled up on our hard straw mats and dreamed of heroic scenarios.’

In many ways conditions at Les Milles, even as it became ever more crowded, were better than at Le Vernet, and certainly an improvement on Gardanne. But the psychological atmosphere of defeat was overwhelming. ‘The deportation camp, far more than any other in my experience, stank of death.’

The ten were unafraid to face evil and do battle, but they were woefully unprepared for an insidious phenomenon that acted upon them almost immediately. Michel called it the Siren Song. ‘I found a strange and enticing sensation gradually descend on me during the first few days and nights. I did not identify it at first. I only realised that, somehow, I was not as determined as I had been earlier. I wondered if it wouldn’t be simpler to surrender myself to whatever plans Vichy France had for me. Such an idea was alien to my previous resolve, yet it was nearly impossible to shake it off. Once hope is gone, and a man accepts the certainty of his fate, hopelessness becomes a malignant non-emotion that attacks the soul. Give in to hopelessness and you cave in completely. Take away hope and you take away life.’

The same pervasive mood of resignation and acceptance affected the other members of the group. Within a week, their original commitment began to dissipate. Individual members of the ten began to avoid one another and seek alternative, less demanding company. ‘My friends no longer wished to speak to me because it was easier to give in. Each day I could feel they were succumbing to their fate. They avoided me. I was a bother to them. They were gone, as surely as a prisoner on death row is gone long before he reaches the electric chair. Nature seems to provide the condemned man with an escape mechanism, a natural anaesthetic that floods the conscious mind with an all-pervasive soothing feeling, an almost euphoric invitation to surrender. It whispers enticingly, “Give in! Come into my arms. Let go!” Anyone who accepts the invitation is beyond help. Regardless of his physical circumstances he is already dead emotionally. He awaits the end as a dispassionate observer of his own demise. Death becomes a welcome relief.’

It was the Siren Song - seductive, irresistible... fatal. In Greek mythology the Sirens were sea nymphs with the bodies of birds and the heads of women, and such sweet voices that mariners who heard their song were lured on to the rocks where the nymphs lived, and their ships destroyed. The Greek hero Ulysses was able to resist the Sirens’ song by following the advice of a sorceress. He had himself bound to the mast of his ship and sealed the ears of the crew with wax. The men were ordered to ignore his most urgent pleas to be released, and only in this way could he listen to the sweet, deadly music of the Sirens and survive.

There was another story that came back to Michel at this time. As a boy he had read about the French Revolution and remembered a vignette in which a group of victims were lined up awaiting the tumbril that would carry them to the guillotine. The guards counted eight men into each wagon, until one - the odd man out - was left standing alone as the last tumbril rumbled off across the cobblestones. He looked about him in panic, and then chased after the others all the way to the guillotine. ‘I did not want to be that man, running headlong to my death. I longed for allies, but was now alone. To keep my mind focused on the battle to live I forced myself to think of the condemned awaiting the guillotine, and the story of Ulysses and the Song of the Sirens. And I envied Ulysses that he could be bound to the mast and I could not. It was the greatest struggle of my life.’

There was another sound that would come to haunt Michel: the long, shrill whistle of the locomotive engines as they pulled out of the railway sidings beyond the walls of the camp.

The first transport Michel experienced pulled into the siding with its string of cattle cars. It had scarcely come to a halt when an announcement was made over the camp’s loudspeaker system. Inmates were ordered to assemble in the courtyard. Michel had long contemplated this terrible moment and had formed a number of plans. In the general confusion, as people hurried to gather their belongings, he improvised a variation of a childhood stunt where he pretended to fall down the stairs. As people made their way down into the yard he slid down the long stairway, drumming his heels on the steps, until he arrived at the bottom and feigned unconsciousness. He was hauled out of the path of the stampeding crowd and then carried by guards to the camp hospital. He lay groaning on a field bed, simulating semi-conscious agony.

The selection of people for deportation went on all day, as the authorities sorted through the requests for exemption. As it became clear that few would be saved, the camp director lost the stomach for the task, declaring that he had assumed the post to help Jews emigrate from France, not to send them to German concentration camps. The police took over the job. The chief explained: ‘I certainly know that the measures we have undertaken are very painful, but if you knew what I know, you would prefer to let foreign Jews leave now instead of having good Frenchmen depart soon.’
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From his bunk in the hospital Michel heard in the distance the dreadful shriek of the train whistle as the transport departed. ‘All my friends - our two fists - went quietly on their last journey.’

He sneaked from the hospital later the same day after witnessing the treatment meted out to genuine patients. ‘The camp was after a body count and didn’t care what shape inmates were in. I saw suicide attempts, who had taken pills of poison, brought in unconscious and have their stomachs pumped in order to be deported. They were not permitted to die there - they had to be kept alive to fill a quota so they could die elsewhere.’

The camp had now lost the majority of its population, and only the Non-Deportables walked in the yard. Non-Deportables were a race apart, made up of the very few who possessed the paperwork of hope: some letter, document or passport that offered them a haven in another country. They were usually citizens of neutral, non-belligerent countries. Turkey, for instance, formally objected to the deportation of its citizens from the outset.
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The Non-Deportables were the envy of everyone in the camp. ‘The rest of us could only hope that they would survive to carry our story to the world outside.’

New inmates were brought by truck every day and the camp began to fill in readiness for the next transport. One day a beautiful young woman with black hair appeared at the gate demanding to join her husband. She was French, and at liberty, but her husband was a Jew and she wanted to share his fate. ‘At first the authorities refused, but she insisted on being with her husband. So they let her in. I watched this beautiful woman and her husband as they walked hand in hand in the courtyard, waiting for the train that would deport them. That love, that devotion, that calm - it moved me very much.’