Hermann Axen; Aide to Erich Honecker
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Hermann Axen, an Auschwitz survivor who became a senior East German Communist and the former nation’s highest-ranking person to officially visit the United States, died Saturday in Berlin of undisclosed causes. He was 75.
Axen was one of former East German leader Erich Honecker’s closest foreign affairs advisers. He became the first ranking East German to travel to the United States on an official visit, meeting then-Secretary of State George P. Shultz in April, 1988.
Axen joined the youth arm of the Communist Party in 1932. In 1940, he was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp in occupied Poland.
Axen was ousted when Honecker’s government was toppled in November, 1989.
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