DUESSELDORF (EJP)--- Germany president Horst Koehler and Chancellor Angela Merkel were amongst the 1,400 people who attended Sunday the commemoration ceremony of Paul Spiegel, the leader of Germany's Jewish community who died April 30.

Entertainers whom Spiegel’s production agency represented, diplomats, as well as representatives of the German Bishops Conference and the European Jewish Congress were among those who paid their last respects to Spiegel in Duesselorf.

The president of Germany’s Central Council of Jews died in a clinic in Duesseldorf, his hometown, at the age 68 after a long illness. He was buried in the local Jewish cemetery in Duesseldorf.

Emotional ceremony

Chaim Adler, cantor from Tel Aviv opened the program with a Psalm. Central Council Vice President, Charlotte Knobloch, the favourite contender for the leadership of Germany’s estimated 100,000 – 200,000 Jews, welcomed the entire upper echelon of the German political spectrum.

“Whoever was lucky to work with Paul Spiegel, who had the luck to be his friend knows what it means to have lost him,” Knobloch said.

Knobloch, and the eulogisers that spoke after her, noted Spiegel’s belief that it was self explanatory for Jewish life to resurge in Germany.

“Paul Spiegel came ‘back home’…and here, the committed democrat became an advocate not just for the Jews, but for all people of culturally different backgrounds…Despite his belief in the democratic institutions in Germany, he feared that he did not achieve all that which needed achieving – i.e. combating the ever growing intolerance and right-wing radicalism among segments of the population – which has even found its way in intellectual circles,” Knobloch said.

“We democrats cannot leave any space in any corner of our country open to right-wingers. There should be no corner of Germany where people with darker skin-colour or those wearing a kippa (scull-cap) must keep away,” she said.

Knobloch proposed to continue in Paul Spiegel’s path - to intensify dialogue with Christians and Muslims.

Political tributes

President Koehler asked that all citizens find the courage to engage themselves to protect those that are weaker and may find themselves in trouble – something that would lead all citizens to feel at home in Germany. “I hope that more Jews in our country will eventually unpack their suitcases here for good,” he stressed.

Chancellor Merkel called Spiegel “the moral authority” which Germany lost. “We owe Spiegel a zero tolerance towards the growing intolerance that is plaguing our streets today,” she said.

The head of government also made reference to the Iranian president’s denial of the holocaust and his aim to remove Israel from the map. “This is not just a theme over which Jews should be getting loud...Everyone has a responsibility to find civil courage,” she said.

The governor of the state of Northrhein-Westphalia, Jürgen Rüttgers, said that Spiegel told him that “Jews are not experts on the war against anti-Semitism…Jews are Germans and should also be treated like everyone else.”

“Spiegel spoke to me as a patriot, as a German Jew. He could speak for all of us in a way that nobody else could… He reached out his hand – not letting himself be as resigned, as his predecessor, Ignaz Bubis had been, to the apparitions of intolerance,” Rüttgers said.

The mayor of Duesseldorf, Joachim Erwin cited Heinrich Heine, “another son of our city, whom Spiegel often emulated once wrote, ‘shout loud when you are down and get yourself back up’”.

Salomon Korn, second vice president of the Central Council of Jews closed the commemoration. He said, “German-Jewish normality cannot be forced upon us or be set by a timetable. It will only come when it is experienced in daily life – when we no longer talk about it.”

The Duesseldorf Jewish community, where Germany’s post-war Jewish community re-emerged as a lobbying unit, planted a forest, in Israel, in Spiegel’s memory.