Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
06MUNICH357
2006-06-13 11:02:00
UNCLASSIFIED
Consulate Munich
Cable title:  

CHAROLOTTE KNOBLOCH ELECTED NEW PRESIDENT OF THE

Tags:  PGOV PREL PINR GM 
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INFO RUCNFRG/FRG COLLECTIVE
UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 MUNICH 000357 

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

DEPT FOR EUR/AGS AND EUR/OHI

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PGOV PREL PINR GM
SUBJECT: CHAROLOTTE KNOBLOCH ELECTED NEW PRESIDENT OF THE
JEWISH COUNCIL IN GERMANY


MUNICH 00000357 001.2 OF 002


UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 MUNICH 000357

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

DEPT FOR EUR/AGS AND EUR/OHI

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PGOV PREL PINR GM
SUBJECT: CHAROLOTTE KNOBLOCH ELECTED NEW PRESIDENT OF THE
JEWISH COUNCIL IN GERMANY


MUNICH 00000357 001.2 OF 002



1. On June 7, 2006, at age 73, Charolotte Knobloch was
unanimously elected President of the Jewish Council in
Germany following the death of Council President Paul
Spiegel on April 30. People who know her are confident she
will be able to gain broad public support in her new
capacity. She has the reputation of being pragmatic and
strong willed, but also open to compromise.


2. Ms. Knobloch had been a candidate for the post in
January 2000, but was defeated by Paul Spiegel who was
elected with six votes to Ms. Knobloch's three. She
remained one of two deputies, the other being Salomon Korn.
Some had urged Korn to challenge Knobloch in 2006, but he
ultimately decided not to run. Ms. Knobloch first became a
board member of the Jewish Council in Germany in 1996. Two
years later, at the request of President Ignatz Bubis, she
became one of his two deputies. In September 1999, she
announced her candidacy to succeed Bubis.


3. In 1985, following the sudden death of President Lamm,
Knobloch was the first woman elected President of Munich's
Jewish community, a significant accomplishment given the
community's reputation for being extremely orthodox, with a
clear distinction between men and women in its synagogue.
Although a compromise candidate at the time, she has been
overwhelmingly reelected every two years since. Munich has
the second largest Jewish community (8,000) in Germany,
after Berlin.


4. After the Second World War, only 60 out of 12,000 Jews
who had lived in Munich returned. Charlotte Neuland
(Knobloch's maiden name) already had a visa to emigrate to
the U.S. when she married businessman Samuel Knobloch.
After starting a family, the couple was reluctant to start
over in a new country, choosing instead to remain in
Munich. In 1981, Knobloch became a member of the Jewish
Community in Munich.


5. Charlotte Knobloch was born in Munich in 1932, daughter
of the renowned Jewish lawyer Siegfried Neuland, who had
been a German soldier in the First World War. Warned about
his imminent arrest by the Nazis in 1936, Neuland was able
to hide his daughter on a farm in a small Franconian
village in Bavaria before he was forced to work in an
ammunition factory. He survived the war, almost blind and
incurably ill. Her mother, a Christian who had converted
to the Jewish faith to marry Siegfried Neuland, divorced
him before the war. Knobloch's grandmother was deported to
Auschwitz and, like many of her relatives, did not survive.
Charlotte Knobloch only survived because the Catholic
Franconian family with whom she lived told authorities she
was the illegitimate child of one of their own daughters.
Knobloch has three children, a daughter who works as a
medical doctor in Israel, another as a lawyer in Paris, and
a son who is a banker in Frankfurt.


6. In light of recent incidents of anti-Semitism, Ms.
Knobloch has called on Jews in Germany not to allow
themselves to become intimidated. "The time is over when
Jews were sitting on packed suitcases, and it won't come
back," she said, calling on her fellow Jews to make clear
they are an integral part of life in Germany. One of her
declared wishes is for the Jewish community to regain its
prior strength: In 1933, 550,000 Jews lived in Germany,
today it's 200,000, with just half of them being members of
Jewish Council.


7. The Munich Jewish Community is completing construction
of a large new community center, with a school and
synagogue, in the heart of the city not far from the site
of the synagogue destroyed in November 1938. The new
center, costing approximately 72 million Euros, will be
inaugurated on the anniversary of Kristallnacht in November
2006, and was funded largely by the City of Munich and the
State of Bavaria. It is a significant achievement for Ms.
Knobloch's tenure as leader of the Munich community and a
concrete symbol of the revival of Jewish life in Germany.


8. Ms. Knobloch is a friend of ConGen Munich who welcomes
contact with the Consul General and consistently attends
our events. She is a prominent and respected person, and
her vocal support for the U.S. in general -- and in
particular for U.S. policy in Iraq and Iran -- has
supported our public diplomacy efforts. Although openly
skeptical of any effort to negotiate with Muslims, she
agrees with our reading of the security challenge emanating
from the Arab world in a way that many German leaders do
not.


9. Previous reporting from Munich is available on our

MUNICH 00000357 002.2 OF 002


SIPRNET website at www.state.sgov.gov/p/eur/munich.


10. This message was coordinated with Embassy Berlin.

ROONEY