Helmut Aris (8 May 1908 – 22 November 1987) became in 1962 the President of the Association of Jewish Communities in the

German Democratic Republic German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

, retaining the position till his death in 1987.

Life

Helmut Aris was the son of Julius Aris, a metal worker originally from East Prussia, and his wife Recha Aris, née Stein. He was born in the Striesen district of

Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label=Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth ...

in Saxony during the first decade of the twentieth century, a period of rapid industrialisation and social tensions. He attended the academically focused King George Gymnasium (a school in Dresden named after the local king) and then, in 1925, embarked on an apprenticeship on the commercial side of the textile business with a firm called "Hirsch & Co.", for whom he worked till 1929. He worked in the textile sector till 1938. Aris married Susanne Reinfeld in 1933. Two children were born to the couple, named Heinz-Joachim and Renate. In November 1938 Aris was arrested. This was a manifestation of the anti-Jewish policies of the

Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported t ...

which had taken power in January 1933. Helmut Aris was Jewish. However, his wife Susanne came from an Evangelical Christian family and for this reason he was, at this stage released. A period of unemployment followed, after which, between 1940 and 1945, Aris was placed under a forced labour regime in a succession of businesses. His father died in 1940 and his mother was deported to

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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

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and

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bombers. In May 1945

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

ended and his hometown of Dresden found itself in that part of what had been Germany that was now designated by the winning side as the

Soviet occupation zone The Soviet Occupation Zone ( or german: Ostzone, label=none, "East Zone"; , ''Sovetskaya okkupatsionnaya zona Germanii'', "Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany") was an area of Germany in Central Europe that was occupied by the Soviet Union as a c ...

(SBZ). Membership of (non-Nazi) political parties was no longer illegal and Aris joined the newly formed

Social Democratic Party The name Social Democratic Party or Social Democrats has been used by many political parties in various countries around the world. Such parties are most commonly aligned to social democracy as their political ideology. Active parties Fo ...

(SPD). However, the Soviet Military Administration had a

plan A plan is typically any diagram or list of steps with details of timing and resources, used to achieve an objective to do something. It is commonly understood as a temporal set of intended actions through which one expects to achieve a goal ...

for what now began to mutate into the

(East Germany). The plan involved a return to a one-party state, and in 1946 the SPD

merged Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are business transactions in which the ownership of companies, other business organizations, or their operating units are transferred to or consolidated with another company or business organization. As an aspect ...

with the former

Communist Party of Germany The Communist Party of Germany (german: Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, , KPD ) was a major political party in the Weimar Republic between 1918 and 1933, an underground resistance movement in Nazi Germany, and a minor party in West German ...

(KPD): members of both parties were invited, with a simple signature, to switch their party allegiance to the Socialist Unity Party (SED). In 1946 Helmut Aris joined the SED. Aris worked as CEO of a succession of industrial concerns from 1945, and till 1965 he also served as Executive Director at the Dresden-based Institute for the Chemical Industry businesses. In the immediate post-war years Aris worked to rebuild what remained of the Jewish community and in 1953 he became a member of the Central Saxony Community Leadership council in succession to Leon Löwenkopf, the

Union of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime The Association of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime/Federation of Antifascists (German: ''Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Naziregimes – Bund der Antifaschistinnen und Antifaschisten'') (VVN-BdA) is a German political confederation founded in 1947 ...

(VVN) founder who had been imprisoned since 1950 (following a

denunciation Denunciation (from Latin ''denuntiare'', "to denounce") is the act of publicly assigning to a person the blame for a perceived wrongdoing, with the hope of bringing attention to it. Notably, centralized social control in authoritarian states re ...

) and fled to the west in 1953. Aris was also elected to leadership of the Dresden Community Leadership in succession to Hans Ogrodek who had fled East Germany. It was reported that following the vast scale of the state mandated killings and

deportations Deportation is the expulsion of a person or group of people from a place or country. The term ''expulsion'' is often used as a synonym for deportation, though expulsion is more often used in the context of international law, while deportation ...

there were only 5,000 Jews remaining in what was becoming East Germany, of whom perhaps 10% were active in the communities. In 1952 Aris was a co-founder of the Association of Jewish Communities in the German Democratic Republic. He 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. From March 1954 to July 1956 he is listed in the

Stasi The Ministry for State Security, commonly known as the (),An abbreviation of . was the state security service of the East Germany from 1950 to 1990. The Stasi's function was similar to the KGB, serving as a means of maintaining state author ...

records among the country's thousands of Informal collaborators (IM) under the code name "IM Lanus", but he later denied having provided reports to the Security Services on Jewish Community members. Between 1962 and 1987 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

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and controlled through the National Front by the country's ruling SED party. He was also 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 A committee or commission is a body of one or more persons subordinate to a deliberative assembly. A committee is not itself considered to be a form of assembly. Usually, the assembly sends matters into a committee as a way to explore them more ...

, of the East German "League for the United Nations" and of the presidium of the . Helmut Aris died on 22 November 1987 in Dresden and was buried with his wife Gertrud in the city's New Jewish Cemetery.

Awards and honours

* 1964 Service medal of the German Democratic Republic * 1969 Ernist Moritz Arnt Medal of the East German National Front * 1978

Patriotic Order of Merit The Patriotic Order of Merit (German: ''Vaterländischer Verdienstorden'', or VVO) was a national award granted annually in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). It was founded in 1954 and was awarded to individuals and institutions for outstanding ...

* 1983

Honour clasp Aris was also a recipient of the (East) German Peace medal.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Aris, Helmut 1908 births 1987 deaths Politicians from Dresden People from the Kingdom of Saxony 20th-century German Jews Socialist Unity Party of Germany members People of the Stasi Recipients of the Patriotic Order of Merit (honor clasp)