us-005578-irn558960-irn558883
type: RecordSet
archival history: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
biographical history: Ernest Michel (1923-2016) was born Ernst Wolfgang Michel on 1 July 1923, in Mannheim, Germany in 1923, the son of Otto (1879-1942?) and Frieda (née Wolf, 1884-1942?). The family also included one daughter, Charlotte (Lotte). Otto Michel owned a cigar factory in Mannheim, but following the Nazi rise to power in Germany in 1933, that business was eventually taken away from him. As Nazi regulations targeting Jews in Germany increased, Ernst was no longer able to attend school, and instead, briefly attended a Jewish school, studied calligraphy, and worked in a Jewish-owned cardboard factory near Mannheim. During this period, Ernst happened upon an American tourist one day in Mannheim, who was lost and needed directions. After Ernst helped him, the man suggested that he write to his son, Robert Lindsay, in Wilmington, Delaware, and that the two could be pen-pals. Ernst took him up on that offer, and began corresponding with Lindsay. As conditions in Mannheim for Jewish families like the Michels deteriorated, the Michels decided that they needed to send their children out of the country. Lotte was sent to France, and from there to Palestine, and the Michels turned to the Lindsay family for help in bringing Ernst to the United States. Although the family agreed to sponsor him, Ernst was unable to immigrate, due to the three-year wait for a visa from the American Consulate. Shortly after the outbreak of World War II, he was seized by the Gestapo and conscripted into a forced labor brigade, working in various locations throughout Germany, and was sent to Auschwitz in early 1943. Unknown to him, his own parents had been arrested in 1940 and deported to concentration camps in France, from which they were deported to Auschwitz and killed there in 1942. Ernst remained there, working in the Buna synthetic rubber plant, among other places, before he was evacuated on a forced march in January 1945, from which he and two other prisoners escaped, while passing through Saxony, where t…
conditions of use: Copyright Holder: Amy Goldberg
has beginning date: 1937-01-01
has end date: 1976-12-31
has or had holder: us-005578
has or had identifier: 1
has or had some members with language: eng
has or had subject: 843
has record set type: Item
identifier: irn558883
is or was included in: us-005578-irn558960
record resource extent: folders 6
record resource structure: Material is arranged in chronological order.
results or resulted from: 1
scope and content: Correspondence from Ernest Michel, originally of Mannheim, Germany, that he wrote as an adolescent and sent to an American pen-pal (Robert Lindsay, of Wilmington, Delaware) from 1937-1939, describing his life and conditions for Jews in Mannheim during that period. Also includes selected postwar documents, such as letters of recommendation from American military personnel; a file of documents from the International Tracing Service, regarding the wartime fates of his parents and grandmother; and a file of materials related to an Auschwitz-Buna Memorial Scholarship Dinner in New York in 1964, which included a reunion of survivors.
title: Ernest Michel papers