An apostle of animal protection and the human-animal bond, veterinarian Michel Klein, who died on Saturday at the age of 103, devoted his long life to the service of animals by being the pioneer and pillar of specialized television programs.
This former resistance fighter developed a strong interest in the animal world from his childhood in Romania. Specializing in operations on dogs and then zoo and circus animals, he revolutionized surgical techniques.
“I’m looking for a master”, “Animals of the world”, “30 million friends”, animal chronicle for 10 years in “Le Club Dorothée”, “Earth, watch out for danger”… In the 1960s it became a cathodic figure in broadcasts raising awareness of animal rights.
Close to Brigitte Bardot, the author of the book “The Beasts Who Made Me Man” was also the vice-president of the Society for the Protection of Animals (SPA) for a long time, co-founded the National Council for Animal Protection and is at the origin, with the support of Jacques Chirac, of the creation of the School of guide dogs for the blind and visually impaired in Paris.
This always smiling little man also works in favor of abandoned dogs and tattooing and participates in the drafting of the first major law on animals.
“Any animal being a sentient being must be treated in conditions compatible with the biological imperatives of its species”, notes this 1976 text.
Born on April 19, 1921 in the northwest of Romania, on the Ukrainian border, Michel Klein grew up in the Carpathians. Surrounded by forests populated by brown bears, the child follows his aunts to collect strawberries and raspberries, sometimes given to the plantigrades to tame them.
“I also had a forester uncle who brought back an Indonesian wolf. I lived with it when it was very small,” he told Le Point in 2021.
– “No question of cheating with animals” –
At the end of the 1930s, his parents sent him to study in France. He was a veterinary student in Toulouse when the war broke out. At just 20 years old, in April 1941, he joined the Resistance within the Prunus network, decimated by the Germans. He narrowly escaped arrest, finding refuge in Auvergne then in Spain.
His parents and his sister Hélène, Jews who remained in Romania, were deported to Auschwitz. Only his sister will survive.
When he opened his veterinary practice in Paris in the 1950s, there were only 8 of them practicing in the entire capital. “We didn’t treat the dogs, we let them die,” he recalled.
It was he who set up the first animal care service in 1960. And he innovates by installing a high-tech surgery room in his 700 m2 veterinary clinic.
He performs anesthesia on elephants and other species as well as unique operations, such as that on a polar bear in Thoiry, the animal park he co-founded.
“Everyone told me ‘You’re going to get killed’ but she didn’t flinch. I was able to heal her and, then, as soon as she saw me, she kissed me,” he said.
It was also in the 1960s that the general public became acquainted with this passionate and colorful veterinarian who tirelessly advocated the cause of animals on television and radio.
As in the show “Terre, attention danger”, which he presents on TF1 with host Dorothée. “Due to the fault of Man, many animal species are threatened with extinction. If we are not careful, one day it will be Man who will disappear,” prophesies the credits.
Michel Klein is sometimes mocked by the medical world when he praises the telepathy of animals.
He assures him: “Animals are not like men, there is no question of cheating, they will sniff you from 10 kilometers away”.
