Michel Joëls was a son of Mozes Joëls and Sophie Levy. He was married to his cousin Elisabeth Joëls who died in a car accident in Belgium in 1938.
Michel Joëls was a member of the city council of The Hague for the Vrijzinnig-Democratische Bond. After the Dutch capitulation in May 1940 he took his own life. He wrote a farewell letter to The Hague mayor De Monchy from which the following quotation:
My willpower is broken, and the grief that my beloved, good and beautiful country for which I thank God in the depths of my heart that I have been born here, now is under foreign domination, destroys the last remnant of my endurance.
In a speech to the city council, mayor S.J.R. de Monchy has commemorated councillor Joëls and has warned for the threatening terror of Nazism. A copy of this speech is preserved in the Jewish Historical Museum.
JHM, documentencollectie, inv. nr. 00000813`
Wally de Lang, Slotakkoord der kinderjaren. Herinneringen aan het Joodsch Lyceum Fisherstraat Den Haag 1941-1943 (Den Haag 2003) 26, 269