Ernest Michel

He continues his active involvement in the organization as consultant and executive vice president emeritus.Mr. Michel arrived in the U.S. as a displaced person in 1946 with the aid of UJA funds. After a brief stint as a reporter and columnist for a small town newspaper, he began his 50 plus year career with the UJA, first as a speaker, and beginning in 1947, as a member of its staff. His career culminated in his position as the CEO of UJA-Federation-New York, the largest citywide fundraising organization in the country.

Born in Germany, Mr. Michel was sent to his first camp at the age of 16. After almost six years in some of the most notorious Nazi concentration camps, he escaped from a death march before the end of World War II. After working briefly for the United States Military Government, he became a special correspondent for the German News Agency DANA at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial where he met Herman Goering, the #1 surviving Nazi. His articles, carrying the byliine "Auschwitz Survivor # 104995" appeared in all German newspapers.

From 1967 to 1970, at the invitation of Baron Elie de Rothschild, Mr. Michel went to France to help organize the French UJA.

Mr. Michel was the initiator and chairman of the highly publicized World Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors in Israel in 1981, which brought together, for the first and only time, 6,000 survivors and their families from 23 countries and four continents. In 1995, he successfully negotiated with the Mormon Church for the withdrawal of almost 400,000 names of Jewish Holocaust victims from the church records who were posthumously baptized by the Mormon Church. As a direct result of his initiative, U.S. Senator Orrin G. Hatch, U.S. Congressman Benjamin A. Gilman and Tom Lantos introduced a resolution in both House of Congress which "deplores the persistent and malicious efforts by persons in this country and abroad who deny the historic reality of the Holocaust."

His critically acclaimed autobiography Promises To Keep, was published in 1993.