Charlotte Knobloch, outgoing head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, received Germany's highest award.
President Christian Wulff presented the Highest Order of Merit to Knobloch, 78, at the presidential palace on Tuesday, to honor of her work for reconciliation between Jews and non-Jews in Germany, and in combating anti-Semitism.
The award comes days before the Central Council is to hold elections for a new chairman to fill the position Knobloch has held since her predecessor, Paul Spiegel, died in 2006. She announced last February that she would not run again.
A longtime leader of the Jewish community in Bavaria and Munich, Knobloch is likely the last council president to have lived through the Holocaust. She was hidden as a child by a non-Jewish family in Bavaria. Her rescuers, devout Catholics, rejected any official recognition; the fact that their two sons came back alive from the war front was thanks enough, they have said.
It is widely expected that that the next chair will be current vice president Dieter Graumann, 60, of Frankfurt. Elections are to take place Nov. 28 in Frankfurt.
Wolff lauded Knobloch for her "struggle against right-wing and anti-Semitism" and upholding a special relationship between the German Jewish community and Israel.