Ernest Michel Named New Head of UJA of Greater N.y.; Survivor of Nazi Holocaust

Ernest W. Michel, veteran Jewish communal executive and a survivor of the Nazi holocaust who was brought to the United States in 1946 with funds raised by the United Jewish Appeal, assumes the role of executive vice-president and campaign director of the United Jewish Appeal of Greater New York on September 1. The announcement of his appointment was made today by Morris L. Levinson, UJA president. Mr. Michel will be responsible for directing the most extensive local fund-raising campaign in the nation, with a corps of 20,000 volunteer workers in New York City, Westchester, Nassau and Suffolk Counties. He has been involved in UJA fund-raising campaigns ever since his arrival in the United States, beginning as UJA West Coast representative. He was named to its executive staff in 1958, and became West Coast Region Director in 1962. He succeeds Henry C. Bernstein, who has been the professional head of UJA since its inception in 1939. Upon completion of the current UJA campaign, Mr. Bernstein will direct a number of special projects for UJA, and will serve as consultant to the organization.

In 1967, Mr. Michel went to Paris at the invitation of the French Jewish community as consultant to the United Jewish Appeal of France where, during the past three years, he has effected a major reorganization of the Jewish community’s fund-raising structure. Mr. Michel, born in 1923, spent most of the war years in the notorious death camps at Auschwitz, Monowitz and Buchenwald. Only on the final death march from Buchenwald. a few weeks before the end of World War II, did he manage to escape. Shortly after the end of the war he accepted an invitation by the American Military Government to help launch the first post-war licensed newspaper in Germany. Subsequently, Mr. Michel became a correspondent for the German news agency DENA at the historic Nuremberg War Crime Trial. His articles from the trial were published throughout Germany, France, the United States and other countries.