Berlin, Germany - A 73-year-old Holocaust survivor was elected president of one of Germany's biggest Jewish bodies on Wednesday, the first time a woman has been chosen a leader of the country's Jewish community.
Charlotte Knobloch's Central Council of Jews in Germany says it represents some 110,000 Jews, over half of the more than 200,000 believed to be living in the country that once tried to wipe them out.
"My future work will focus on integration of immigrants from the former Soviet Union and the fight against growing anti-Semitism, right-wing extremism and xenophobia," Knobloch said shortly after being elected.
Germany's Jewish population has tripled over the last decade and has become the third largest in Europe, according to the foreign ministry. Since 1990, more than 170,000 Jews have come to Germany from what is now the former Soviet Union.
Chancellor Angela Merkel's office issued a statement congratulating Knobloch and saying the German leader looked forward to cooperation between the government and the council.
German President Horst Koehler also wrote a congratulatory note to Knobloch, saying: "You are taking on a difficult and especially important task in our country. I am grateful to you."
Munich-born Knobloch became vice president of the council in 1997 and was named vice president of the New York-based World Jewish Congress (WJC) in 2005.
She survived the Holocaust by living with a Catholic family in Franconia.
Knobloch was the daughter of well-known Munich lawyer Fritz Neuland. After World War Two, she had intended to emigrate to the United States but settled back in Munich instead.
WJC Deputy Secretary General Maram Stern said in a statement that Knobloch was "an outstanding personality who has done tremendous work for rekindling Jewish life in Germany" after the horrors of the Holocaust.
Knobloch has called for a ban on far-right parties in Germany, including the National Democratic Party (NPD). She has also criticized Berlin for not being forceful enough in its fight against neo-Nazis.
She succeeds Paul Spiegel, who died in April after a long battle with leukemia. The other favorite for the council presidency was Salomon Korn, the Polish-born son of a rabbi, though he chose not to run.
Spiegel signed an accord in January 2003 with then German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder which gave the council the same legal status as the country's main churches and annual government support of 3 million euros ($4 million).
At the time of the council's founding in 1950, there were only 15,000 Jews left in Germany. In 1933, the year Adolf Hitler took power, there were an estimated 600,000 Jews in Germany.
Six million European Jews were killed in the Nazi Holocaust.