Promises to Keep: One Man's Journey Against Incredible Odds

Ernest W. Michel has led a charmed life. His parents and his friends were murdered by German Nazis and he too should have become a forgotten name and an unrecorded number tattooed on the arm of a corpse. Michel survived against tremendous odds. After escaping from the Nazis, he made his way to the United States. But he couldn't forget that he had promises to keep, promises he'd made to friends, many of whom are now dead. He dedicated his life to telling the world what happened in the camps and to the struggle for the establishment of a Jewish nation. Among the book's highlights is Michel's description of the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial which he covered as a reporter as well as his dramatic encounter with the #2 Nazi, Herman Goering. Ernest Michel helped to raise as much as $130,000,000 a year for the United Jewish Appeal. He worked with Baron Elie de Rothschild and other leaders of the Jewish community in France to raise funds for Israel. And then he kept another promise: he organized a worldwide reunion of all those survivors who suffered under the Nazi yoke. Michel has met and chatted with Presidents and Prime Ministers. He has been given awards and honored throughout the world for his work on behalf of Israel and the Jewish people. Through it all, he has lived a full life, appreciating and savoring every moment of the past fifty years. For he knows that, but for his determination and that sometimes elusive lady called luck, he would no longer exist, not even in anyone's memory.