Dieter Graumann

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Dieter Graumann, born 20 August 1950 in Ramat Gan, Israel, originally named David Graumann, is an Israeli-German jurist and economist. He served as President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany from 2010 to 2014 and has been Vice President of the World Jewish Congress since May 2013. He succeeded Charlotte Knobloch in both roles.

Graumann’s parents were Polish Holocaust survivors who met in Zeilsheim, Germany. The family moved to Germany when he was one year old, and his name was later changed to Dieter in an attempt to hide his Jewish identity.

After finishing school, Graumann studied economics at Goethe University Frankfurt and law at King’s College London, earning his doctorate in 1979 on the European Economic Community. He worked for the Deutsche Bundesbank for two years and was also president of Makkabi Frankfurt, now honorary president.

Before becoming president of the Central Council, he worked in private asset management and participated in various German Jewish organizations in Frankfurt.

In 2009 Graumann announced his candidacy for the presidency of the Central Council of Jews in Germany and won, becoming the first president who had not survived the Holocaust personally. In late 2010 he took office, succeeding Charlotte Knobloch, and in 2013 he also became Vice President of the World Jewish Congress.

During his presidency, Graumann spoke on issues of antisemitism and Jewish life in Germany. In 2012 he criticized a Cologne court’s decision to label circumcision as genital mutilation, calling the ruling insensitive. He also published a book in 2012 about the future of German Jewry, discussing threats from left-wing anti-Zionists and Islamist movements.

In 2013 he criticized the response to an antisemitic incident involving a rabbi in Offenbach. In 2014 some of his comments linking European antisemitism to the Israel-Hamas conflict and comparing antisemitism in pro-Palestinian groups to the Holocaust drew criticism for trivializing the Holocaust. On 31 October 2014 he announced he would not seek another term as president.

He was succeeded as president of the Central Council by Josef Schuster.