(AFP) - Germany's presidential office says that former president Roman Herzog died at the age of 82, in the early hours of Tuesday in a hospital near his hometown in the southwestern state of Baden-Wurttemberg. Born in the southern state of Bavaria, he grew up under the Nazi regime and is remembered for travelling to Poland as soon as he assumed the largely ceremonial post to ask for forgiveness on the 50th anniversary of the 1944 Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
The following year, half a century after the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz, Herzog attended a Jewish ceremony at the site. The World Jewish Congress remembered him as a "great fighter for the rule of law and for a free and tolerant society". WJC Deputy CEO Maram Stern issued a statement that Herzog had "distinguished himself with his great openness and friendship toward the Jewish community and for promoting its role in German civil society."