He survived imprisonment in several Nazi concentration camps after serving in the Maquis of the French Resistance and worked with the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps during World War II.
When France fell to the Nazis, he lived in Nice, under the Vichy government, changing his name to Michel Thomas so he could operate in the French Resistance movement more easily.
In August 1942, Thomas got released from Les Milles using forged papers and made his way to Lyon, where his duties for the Resistance entailed recruiting Jewish refugees into the organization.
[2] In February 1943, after being arrested, tortured and subsequently released by the Milice, the Vichy militia (or "French Gestapo"),[3] he joined a commando group in Grenoble and then the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps, working unpaid as a scout and interpreter.
[3] Thomas, along with CIC colleague Ted Kraus, subsequently captured SS Major Gustav Knittel (wanted for his role in the Malmedy massacre).
[4] In the final week of World War II, Thomas was instrumental in rescuing from destruction a cache of Nazi documents that had been shipped by the Gestapo to be pulped at a paper mill in Freimann, Germany.
[7] He remained unmarried until 1978 when he wedded Los Angeles schoolteacher Alice Burns; the couple had a son and daughter before the marriage ended in a divorce.
In a seemingly contradictory U.S. District Court ruling, Judge Audrey Collins said that although readers of the article might conclude that Thomas lied about his wartime experiences, the newspaper didn’t actually intend to convey that implication: "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.
[13][14]In 2004, after archival documents and recent testimonials of Thomas's surviving World War II comrades were submitted to the U.S. Army by Senator John McCain and Representative Carolyn Maloney, Thomas was awarded the Silver Star for "gallantry in action against the enemy in France from August to September 1944 while a lieutenant in the French Forces of the Interior attached to the [U.S.] 1st Battalion, 180th Infantry Regiment, 45th Infantry Division.