Ernest Michel

At age 19, in March 1943, Ernest Michel arrived in Auschwitz after five days and four nights in cattle cars. He was born in Mannheim, Germany, in 1932 to a Jewish family which had been living in Germany for over 300 years. He was arrested on September 3, 1939, three days after the outbreak of World War II, and spent the next five and a half years in slave labor and concentration camps.

Ernest Michel's parents, grandmother, uncles, aunts, cousins were all murdered by the Nazis, gassed in Auschwitz. He survived and after the war, 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 byline "Auschwitz Survivor #104995" appeared in all German newspapers.

Michel arrived in the United States in 1946. After a brief stint as a reporter and columnist for a small town newspaper, he began a 50 year career with the UJA, first as a speaker, than as a member of its staff. His career culminated in his position as the CEO of the UJA-Federation-New York, the largest citywide fundraising organization in the country

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 for the withdrawal of almost 400,000 names of Jewish Holocaust victims from the church records who were posthumously baptized by the Mormon Church.

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

Holocaust survivor and author
Ernest Michel

Community Yom HaShoah Commemoration

Monday, May 1, 2006

Wichita State University

Duerksen Fine Arts Building

Miller Concert Hall

7:00 pm - No Charge

Inter-faith memorial service

sponsored by:

The Mid-Kansas Jewish Federation

Wichita State University
Newman University, Inter-Faith Ministries
and the National Conference of Community and Justice