Michel Friedman

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Michel Friedman (born January 25, 1956 in Paris) is a German lawyer, CDU politician and talk show host. From 2000 to 2003 he was Vice President of the Council of German Jews, the leading Jewish umbrella organization in Germany, and from 2001 to 2003 President of the European Jewish Congress. From 1998 to 2003 he had his own TV show "Vorsicht ! Friedman" (Careful! Friedman) regional public TV station for Hesse.

[edit] Background and Youth

Friedman was born to a polish-Jewish family. His parents and his grandmother were so-called Schindlerjuden, i.e. Oskar Schindler recruited them for slave labor, thereby rescuing them from a concentration camp fate. They had been in the most infamous of all concentration camps, the extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. After the second world war, his family opened a fur shop in Paris. He has a brother living today in Israel. In 1965, the family returned to Germany and settled in Frankfurt am Main. Friedman started studying medicine, but then switched to law. He finished in 1988 and became a doctor of law in 1994.

[edit] The Friedman affair

In 2003, he was convicted in a case involving prostitution and drug usage. He was accused of the latter since he offered cocaine to prostitutes he bought. Friedman used the false name of Paolo Pinkas (a Hebrew name), which was misinterpreted by the police as Paolo Pinkel (Paolo Pee). He withdrew from public office and apologized to the German people and asked for "a second chance". On July 8, 2003, he was fined 17,000 Euro for drug possession, and is thus considered criminally convicted ("vorbestraft").

Since then he has taken on some TV appearances again.