Hermann Axen, a Jew who is the highest-ranking East German official ever to visit the United States, said Wednesday that everyone enjoys religious freedom in his country.
There are 600 Jews and thousands more of “Jewish origin” in East Germany, Axen said at a National Press Club luncheon. Axen, 72, who chairs the Foreign Policy Committee of the country’s parliament and is a member of the political bureau of the ruling Socialist Unity Party, is in the United States on an unofficial visit.
It is believed that Axen’s visit could pave the way for an official visit by East German leader Erich Honecker. While in Washington, Axen met with Secretary of State George Shultz and Deputy Secretary of State John Whitchead.
Apparently Axen is trying to increase contacts with U.S. Jews. Warren Eisenberg, director of the international council of B’nai B’rith International, said he was invited to a dinner in honor of Axen at the East German Embassy, but could not attend. An East German Embassy, but could not attend. An East German Embassy official said some U.S. Jewish leaders were invited to a reception at the embassy Thursday afternoon.
A HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR
Axen, who stands about 5-feet tall, is the only member of his immediate family to survive the Holocaust. He was interned in Auschwitz and Buchenwald and was liberated from the latter in April 1945. He expressed his thanks Thursday to the United States for saving him.
His talk did not touch on Israel or the recent announcement that Rabbi Isaac Neuman, a retired U.S. rabbi who had been serving at an East Berlin congregation for eight months, would leave because of differences with the local Jewish community.
Axen stressed that anti-Semitism is “prohibited and strictly prosecuted.”
He said East Germany observes the separation between church and state, and said “full liberty” is provided to the “religious community.”
“What belongs to the church, that is the church; what belongs to the state is the state,” Axen said.
He would not discuss worker unrest in neighboring Poland, saying that he would not interfere in the internal affairs of a “third country,” which he said would violate the 1975 Helsinki Final Act.
Axen said his country has “no unemployment, homelessness or poverty.” Soviet officials often invoke those lines when the United States criticizes the Kremlin’s human rights policies.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
