Michael Schneider appointed new WJC secretary general

Michael Schneider, former vice president of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, has been appointed secretary general of the World Jewish Congress. He will assume his duties on September 10.

Schneider's appointment last Wednesday ended a turbulent period for the WJC, a political umbrella group for world Jewry. Over the past 15 years, the WJC led the campaign to restore Holocaust-era Jewish property, negotiating with European governments, banks and insurance companies.

The organization was rocked three years ago by the discovery of financial irregularities under then-secretary general Rabbi Israel Singer. In March, then-WJC president Edgar Bronfman fired Singer, generating a storm at WJC offices worldwide. Bronfman and Stephen Herbits, who took over Singer's post, also took steps to weed out Singer supporters from the ranks, including replacing Jerusalem office head Bobby Brown with Oded Eran, a former ambassador.

They also brought about the replacement of European Jewish Congress president Pierre Besnainou with the Jewish Russian oligarch Moshe Kantor, and reached an agreement with cosmetics billionaire Ron Lauder to take over as WJC president in place of Bronfman, 77.

Schneider's appointment hit a snag when it emerged that representatives of the Jewish Agency and the WJC Jerusalem office had not been invited to take part in the steering committee's decisive conference call. A Lauder associate told Haaretz that Lauder had informed Jewish Agency head Ze'ev Bielsky and Israeli WJC branch head MK Shai Hermesh (Kadima) of the expected appointment beforehand.