Leadership change
February 8, 2010
Following a meeting of the leadership of Germany's Central Council of Jews in Frankfurt on Sunday, Charlotte Knobloch said she had decided not to run again when her current term ends in November.
The 77-year-old Jewish leader said that she wanted to "consciously bring about a generational change" in the leadership of the organisation.
Knobloch also dismissed speculation that she had been pressured to give up her post ahead of time.
Leadership row
Last week there was speculation in the German media that a rift had emerged within the Council over the organisation's future policy and leadership make-up.
Newspapers reported a growing feeling among the younger generation of German Jews that it was time to define Jewish idendity in Germany by something more than the atrocities carried out by the Nazis.
Charlotte Knobloch is one of the few remaining German Jews to have lived through the Holocaust and has worked tirelessly to keep memories of the Nazi's mass murder of 6 million European Jews alive in Germany.
On Sunday, Knobloch said that she would continue to have the "full, unlimited trust" of both the directorate as well as the presidium of the Central Council for her policy.
But Sergey Lagodinsky, a Jew of Russian origin and senior member of Berlin's Jewish Comunity, on Monday criticized the leadership of the Council over the way it handled the departure.
He told the German national radio broadcaster 'Deutschlandfunk' that the fact that "information about the Council meeting was intentionally leaked to the media made the resignation appear undignified."
"This is not the way we should initiate a new beginning," he added.
A new policy
Lagodinsky admitted though that a new policy of the Central Council was needed, especially after the massive influx of Jews from the former Soviet Union in the late 1980s, and the revival of Jewish life in Germany in the 1990s.
"Since then many Jews from the United States, Israel and the former Soviet Union have settled here and need to be integrated in Jewish communities here," he said. "The Council's policy must eventually provide for that."
A new face
The successor to Charlotte Knobloch is likely to be the Central council's current vice-president, Dieter Graumann.
The Frankfurt-based businessman was born in Israel in 1950, and moved to Germany with his parents before his second birthday.
He would be the first Council president who didn't experience the Holocaust personally.
The father of two has repeatedly stressed the importance of positive Jewish values, saying that German Jews would “only know what they were standing against, but not what for.”
But he also said that the Central Council of Jews in Germany needed to focus on the spiritual strength of Judaism, as well as keeping the momory of the Holocaust alive.
The Central Council of Jews in Germany unites 107 communities representing about 106,00 Jews across Germany – just over half of the country's estimated Jewish population.
Uh/dpa/AP
Editor: Rob Turner