Buy this book on-line ROBBINS, CHRISTOPHER: : THE TEST OF COURAGE: A BIOGRAPHY OF MICHAEL THOMASLONDON.CENTURY,1999. ISBN 0712679693.
UK,8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn.FINE/FINE.No owner inscrptn,but price-clip to dw/dj.Glossy, laminated,sepia photographic dw/dj; with negligible shelf-wear and minimal creasing to edges, no rubbing - no nicks or tears present.Miniscule bumping with reciprocal creasing to head of spine/backstrip and no bumped corners.Top+fore-edges minimally aged but clean and bright; contents bright,tight and clean.Clean,black paper-covered boards with bright,crisp,stamped gilt letters to spine/backstrip and immaculate b/w map illustrated endpapers. UK,8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn,x-xipp+2-402pp includes half-title+title pages,prologue, 10 chapters,16pp contemporary b/w photographs between pp212/13,subject postscript,picture credits,6pp bibliography,end notes,and an index.
Today,(then 1999) Michael Thomas teaches languages to ghetto kids,heads of industry and movie stars in a matter of days, succeeding even with people who consider themselves hopeless linguists.To those who have been taught by him,he seems to be a miracle worker with a magical gift for unlocking the secret powers of the mind. This unique understanding was gained under extreme circumstances.
Stateless in Vichy France at the beginning of WWII,he was incarcerated and starved in a concentration camp at the foot of the Pyrenees.
Forced into slave labour in a coal mine in Provence,he avoided being sent to Auschwitz by hiding within the confines of a deportation camp for six weeks.He escaped death to join the Secret Army of the Resistance.He was arrested and interrogated by Klaus Barbie,'Butcher of Lyon',whom he deceived into releasing him, and was later re-arrested by the French Gestapo and tortured.He held out by entering a psychological state in which he no longer registered pain and after six hours of torture,his tormentors threw him into a cell and he survived to re-join the Resistance.After the Allies invaded France he joined the American forces,fought his way into Germany and was with the troops who liberated Dachau.
He personally interrogated the camp's hangman and oversaw his handwritten confession.At the end of the war he became a Nazi-hunter.Working for American Counter Intelligence he posed as a Nazi himself to infiltrate and expose undergroungd networks of SS men dedicated to the return of a Fourth Reich.In spite of the fact that his entire family had been murdered in Auschwitz,and many close friends killed in combat,at the very end of the war he staged an elaborate gala evening in Munich which he called a Reconciliation Concert. Using German musicians,and in defiance of strict Allied non-fraternisation laws,he brought friend and foe together in the belief that there had to be a different and better future.
Christopher Robbins has dug deep to explore and substantiate the details of the Michael Thomas story.He has authenticated every episode through camp records,Vichy documents,Resistance papers, US Army reports and hundreds of hours of interviews with this extraordinary man.The result is one of the most inspirational
stories of the 20thC.
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