Josef Schuster, 60, has been elected as new president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany. Schuster succeeds Dieter Graumann, who stepped down after four years in office.
At a board meeting in Frankfurt, Abraham Lehrer (Cologne) and Mark Dainow (Offenbach) were elected as vice-presidents of the council, which is the umbrella body of the 108 Jewish communities in Germany.
Josef Schuster was born in Israel in 1954. When he was two years old, he and his family - which has roots in the Lower Franconia region - returned to Germany. Since 1998, the physician has served as head of the Würzburg Jewish community and since 2010 he was a vice-president of the Central Council. Schuster has also served as head of the Association of Jewish Communities in Bavaria. As head of the Central Council, he will also be a vice-president of the World Jewish Congress.
Following his election, the new president said that the Central Council said that as a roof body, the Central Council wanted to serve the interests of its affiliated communities. In an interview with 'Deutsche Welle', he said he didn't like it at all when conversation touched the subject of the relationship between 'Jews and Germans'. "That always makes my blood pressure rise a little," said the doctor. "Such phrasing would imply that Jews aren't Germans."
During his four-year tenure, Schuster's predecessor Dieter Graumann notably managed to improve the financial situation of the Jewish umbrella body by renegotiating an agreement with the federal government. Graumann told the news portal 'Tagesschau.de' that the integration of Jews from the former Soviet Union who arrived after the fall of communism 25 years ago and today make up around 90 percent of the Jewish community in Germany, had been handled well. "When you go to a Jewish school in Frankfurt these days, you won't notice if a pupil is from Minsk or from Munich," Graumann said.
