13 Facts About Helmut Aris

Helmut Aris became in 1962 the President of the Association of Jewish Communities in the German Democratic Republic, retaining the position till his death in 1987.

Helmut Aris was the son of Julius Aris, a metal worker originally from East Prussia, and his wife Recha Aris, nee Stein.

Helmut Aris was born in the Striesen district of Dresden in Saxony during the first decade of the twentieth century, a period of rapid industrialisation and social tensions.

Helmut Aris's father died in 1940 and his mother was deported to Riga where she was murdered in 1942.

Helmut Aris was scheduled to be deported on 16 February 1945, but it was never carried out on account of the very heavy bombing to which the city was subjected that week by British and American bombers.

Helmut Aris worked as CEO of a succession of industrial concerns from 1945, and till 1965 he served as Executive Director at the Dresden-based Institute for the Chemical Industry businesses.

Helmut Aris was elected to leadership of the Dresden Community Leadership in succession to Hans Ogrodek who had fled East Germany.

In 1952 Helmut Aris was a co-founder of the Association of Jewish Communities in the German Democratic Republic.

Helmut Aris became the association's vice-president in 1958 and in 1962 he succeeded Hermann Baden as president of the Association of Jewish Communities in the German Democratic Republic.

Between 1962 and 1987 Helmut Aris was a member of the presidium for the National Council of the National Front which was an alliance of minor political parties and mass movements that were represented on a quota basis in the National Assembly and controlled through the National Front by the country's ruling SED party.

Helmut Aris was a member of the East German committee for the "Fight against Racism Decade", the central leadership of the East German Committee of Anti-Fascist Resistance fighters, of the East German "League for the United Nations" and of the presidium of the East German Peace Council.

Helmut Aris died on 22 November 1987 in Dresden and was buried with his wife Gertrud in the city's New Jewish Cemetery.

Helmut Aris was a recipient of the German Peace medal.