Background
Josef Schuster was born in Haifa in 1954. His father David Schuster was a merchant who was forced to emigrate to Palestine in 1938. Both parents of his mother died at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Josef Schuster was born in Haifa in 1954. His father David Schuster was a merchant who was forced to emigrate to Palestine in 1938. Both parents of his mother died at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Schuster went to school in Würzburg and studied medicine at the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg.
His paternal family had lived in Franconia since at least the middle of the 16th century. His family returned to Germany in 1956. He became a specialist in internal medicine after training at the Juliusspital.
Since 1988 he has maintained a private practice in internal medicine in Würzburg.
Schuster is a volunteer as an emergency physician for the Bavarian section of the German Red Cross. In 1998 Schuster became President of the Jewish Community in Würzburg, a position his father had held between 1958 and 1996.
Four years later he was elected to be President of the Organization of Jewish Communities in Bavaria. In 2010 he became the vice-president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany.
When Dieter Graumann stepped down as President of the Central Council, his election on November 30, 2014 as the successor was uncontested.
He is a member of the Bavarian Bioethics Commission and the central institutional review board of the German Medical Association.