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After the NSDAP came to power, the Spiegel family first moved to the neighboring Warendorf. After Kristallnacht in 1938, the family moved on to Brussels. Spiegel survived the Holocaust in Flanders, where he was hidden by a farming family. His sister had previously been arrested during a raid in Brussels; she died in a concentration camp. His father Hugo Spiegel survived the Buchenwald, Auschwitz and Dachau concentration camps. In 1945 the family was the first Jewish family to return to Warendorf. The father rebuilt the synagogue community. Paul Spiegel completed his school education here. The traumatic childhood experiences of National Socialist persecution and war sharpened the young Paul Spiegel's political awareness at an early age. The rebirth of Jewish life in post-war Germany was due to a special socio-political commitment of the Jewish population, whose members, with a distinct Jewish identity, nevertheless, as Germans, critically contributed to the reconstruction process of the Federal Republic.
An expression of this awareness was Spiegel's early commitment to the Jewish community. In 1958 he began a traineeship at the "Allgemeine Jüdische Wochenzeitung" in Düsseldorf, where he then worked as an editor until 1965. In the 1960s, Spiegel also wrote as a correspondent for various press organs, including: Montrealer Nachrichten, Nieuw Israelietisch Weekblad (Amsterdam), Neue Welt (Vienna), Jüdische Rundschau Maccabi (Basel), Der Mittag (Düsseldorf), Neue Rhein- Newspaper (Düsseldorf) and Westfälische Rundschau (Düsseldorf). In 1964 Spiegel married Gisèle Spatz, with whom he had two daughters. Three years later he was elected to the Jewish local council in Düsseldorf. From 1965 to 1972 he worked as editor of the Jewish press service and as assistant to the general secretary of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, the umbrella organization of the Jewish communities in the Federal Republic.
He subsequently worked as editor-in-chief of the magazine "Mode & Wohnen" (Düsseldorf) from 1973 to 1974 and as a senior public relations officer for the Rhenish Savings Banks and Giro Association from 1974 to 1986. In 1984, Spiegel was appointed chairman of the local council of the Jewish community in Düsseldorf. In 1986 he founded an international artist agency that bore his name. In addition to supporting international artists, he was also heavily involved in the socio-political area through his membership in the "Association against Forgetting - for Democracy" and as chairman of the "Citizens for Citizens" foundation. From 1989 to 2000, Spiegel also served as chairman of the Central Welfare Office for Jews in Germany. The recognized journalist joined the broadcasting council and the program committee of WDR in 1991. From 1993, Spiegel held the office of vice president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany under the chairmanship of Ignatz Bubis. In 1995 he was appointed chairman of the regional association of Jewish communities in North Rhine-Westphalia.
After Bubi's death in August 1999, Spiegel succeeded him as President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany in 2000. As the highest representative of the Jewish population in Germany, he stood out - in keeping with his predecessors Heinz Galinski and Ignatz Bubis - as a critical warning against the recent xenophobic and anti-Semitic phenomena in reunified Germany. The particular sensitivity expressed towards irresponsible approaches to history prompted the chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany to make an unequivocal statement in the spring of 2002 in the "anti-Semitism dispute" triggered by the FDP politician Jürgen W. Möllemann: Paul Spiegel stood behind him the personally attacked Vice President of the Central Council, Michel Friedman, and thereby made it clear that the cause of the conflict was not to be found in personal animosity between the two opponents, but in a politically irresponsible, election campaign strategy maneuver by the FDP.
At the same time, Spiegel draws attention to itself through journalistic educational initiatives about Judaism. As an author he published the titles "Shavua Tov! A good week! Jewish towers from Schwäbisch Gmünd" (2001), "Home again?" (2003), "What is kosher?" (2003), and "Conversation about Germany" (2006). Spiegel received numerous awards, including the Order of Merit of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (1993), the Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class (1997), honorary citizenship of the city of Warendorf (2000) and the Heinrich Albertz Prize (2001).
