About
Michel Thomas
Click here to find out more about Michel Thomas' Biography
Michel Thomas’ remarkable life experiences fuelled his passion for
teaching languages.
“My own history of the Second World War
involved 2 years in
concentration camps… and being tortured.”
Michel Thomas
War hero who taught the stars new languages in just 3 days.
Michel Thomas was a gifted linguist who mastered more than ten languages
in his life-time and became famous for teaching much of Hollywood’s
“A” list how to speak a foreign language. Film stars such
as Woody Allen, Emma Thompson and Barbra Streisand paid up to £18,000
each for face-to-face lessons. He even taught Doris Day Spanish to enable
her to sing with confidence the hit song, Que Será Será!
Michel Thomas was born Moniek Kroskof, the only son of a Jewish family
who owned a textile factory in Poland in 1914. As a young boy, Michel
was sent to live in Germany to escape the anti-Semitism directed at his
family. Living in Vienna in 1938, when the Nazis annexed Austria, Michel
was rendered stateless as a Jew.
He fled the country for France, and when the Germans invaded he joined
the French Resistance.
He spent two brutal years in French concentration and slave labour camps,
narrowly avoiding being sent to Auschwitz. He escaped, surviving capture,
interrogation by Klaus Barbie and torture by the Gestapo.
His mastery of languages enabled him to adopt many identities. At the
end of the war, he masterminded operations to uncover war criminals and
infiltrate underground Nazi groups.
In 1944, Michel was nominated for the Silver Star medal for his service
to the US Army’s 45th Infantry Division in France. The award was
finally presented to him in May 2004, sixty years later.
It was during Michel’s wartime experiences, particularly his torture
by the Gestapo, that he discovered his ability to block out pain and unearth
the untapped potential of the human mind. The only way he survived his
wartime experiences, particularly his capture by the Gestapo, was by concentrating
and placing his mind beyond the physical.
He said, “I concentrated so hard, that
I stopped feeling pain. I was amazed at myself.”
Fascinated by this experience, he was determined that after the war, he
would devote himself to exploring this further, and dedicated his life
to education.
“I contemplated the untapped reserves
of the human mind. The great
hidden depths of the brain. I learned from it.”
In 1947, he moved to Los Angeles and set up the Michel Thomas Language
Centers and taught languages for over fifty years in New York, Beverly
Hills and London.
Michel Thomas died of heart failure at his home in New York City on Saturday
8th January 2005. He was 90 years old.
Michel remains:
~ The world’s greatest language teacher.
~ An inspiration and mentor to learners everywhere
If you would like to read more about Michel’s
amazing life, why not buy his biography, The Test of Courage? Click
here to find out more!