Posted on 06/07/2006 1:04:56 PM PDT by wolf78
BERLIN (AFP)--- Germany’s growing Jewish community on Wednesday elected its first female leader, Charlotte Knobloch, a Holocaust survivor and outspoken critic of the extreme right.
She pledged to heal divisions between native Germans and newcomers from the former Soviet bloc.
The executive board of the Central Council of Jews in Germany said the 73-year-old Knobloch, who has led the Jewish community in the southern city of Munich since 1985, had won its vote unanimously.
Knobloch succeeds Paul Spiegel, a well-liked and respected figure who died in late April at the age of 68 after a long illness.
The Council is the highest political and religious body representing Germany’s estimated 110,000 – 200,000 Jews, most of whom are immigrants from the former Soviet bloc who arrived after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Focus on integration
Knobloch described their integration as "one of the most important tasks" facing her due to the cultural and language barriers between the old and new members of the community.
She told reporters that Jews here now saw themselves as full-fledged members of German society "even if we are still far from a normal situation".
Before WWII and the Holocaust, there were some 600,000 German Jews.
Chancellor Angela Merkel hailed Knobloch’s "active and tireless engagement" for the Jewish community in Europe and said the close cooperation between the government and the Council would continue.
(Excerpt) Read more at ejpress.org ...
Garlic should set up a stink.........
Extreme Right? You mean she's opposed to Libertarians and Anarchists??? I didn't know they were even a major component of the political scene in socialist Germany.
But the SCENT-IMENT remains..........
"Extreme Right? You mean she's opposed to Libertarians and Anarchists??? I didn't know they were even a major component of the political scene in socialist Germany."
The thing is that as with football / soccer the European definition (or basically that of the rest of the world) of right and left differs from the American.
The word "libertarian" is hardly ever used over here. Libertarianism is called liberalism here, and its extreme forms "radical liberalism" or "neoliberalism". What you call a liberal in the US is a social democrat over here, which IMHO is a far more fitting term (after all, overregulation and politics that caters to the unions is the exact opposite of liberty, from Latin "libertas, libertatis": freedom, and "liber, libera, liberum": free, as in "free market economy").
Plus: Liberals / libertarians are generally not considered to belong to the right (well, maybe to the bourgeoise right, but not to the extreme right), rather to the center.
The term "extreme right" is reserved for ultra-nationalists or fascists, even if they advocate economic ideas along the lines of socialism / social democracy.
I think the extreme right in Germany is probably favorable to the old Nazis, etc. That sort of thing.
Is she Chuck's Mom? :)
I'm aware of that. National Socialists are frequently called "extreme right" over here, as well. I'm making a point: calling National Socialists "right-wing" (of any sort) is a piece of Communist propaganda. The commies wanted to distance themselves from their defeated, disgraced opponents the National Socialists and Fascists, so invented the false notion that they were somehow opposite to the communists. Thus "Extreme Right".
In fact, the only reason that National Socialists and International Communists are enemies is that bloody handed genocidal socialist dictators don't like competition.
I'm guessing she's referring to fascists, Nazi-sympathizers, skinheads, etc.
In the case of Germany, the term "extreme right" basically refers to these three parties and their sympathizers:
NPD ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Democratic_Party_of_Germany )
DVU ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_People%27s_Union ) and
Die Republikaner ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republicans_%28Germany%29 )
NPD and DVU are both Neo-Nazi parties and have strong ties with skinhead groups, whereas the "Republikaner" are nationalists and anti-immigration, but do not idolize Hitler. The American equivalent of the "Republikaner" would probably be Pat Buchanan, IIRC.
In France, for example, "extreme right" would refer to LePen (Jean-Marie LePen).
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