Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens: records

Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens: records 

Centralverein deutscher Staatsbuerger juedischen Glaubens was one of the largest and most significant of the Jewish organizations in Germany before World War II.

The majority of its files, relating mostly to the 1920s and 1930s, were confiscated by the Gestapo in November 1938 and were, for many years, considered lost.

In 1990 the Center for the Preservation of Historical Documentary Collections (the “Osoby” or trophy archives) in Moscow revealed the existence of about 4,000 files from the Centralverein’s chief office in Berlin. These files were among the many documentary collections, which had been confiscated by the Gestapo and were subsequently taken by the Russians, towards the end of World War II.

In 1996 the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People began microfilming this important collection, and made it available to the research public.

In 2005 the Wiener Library, whose founder, Alfred Wiener, played a key role in this organisation, acquired a microfilm copy of this archive with the generous assistance of Alfred Jacobi.