Centralverein Deutscher Staatsbürgers Jüdischen Glaubens

Centralverein Deutscher Staatsbürgers Jüdischen Glaubens 

The Centralverein Deutscher Staatsbürgers Jüdischen Glaubens was dedicated to protecting the civil and social rights of Jews in Germany, while at the same time, cultivating their German identity. The Centralverein, active from 1893/1938, was originally established in response to the rise of political anti-Semitism. Part of the union’s platform was to view Jews as a religious group. When the Nazi party rose to national power in 1933, the union opened a legal office to fight for Jewish rights, and initiated an information campaign, which at first tried to calm German Jews. After the anti-Jewish boycott of 1933-04, the union began organizing educational and religious activities, hoping to convince the Nazi government to recognize the Jews as a separate but equal group within Germany. After the racial Nuremberg Laws were issued in 1935, the organization increasingly made emigration and job training its main priorities. After the Kristallnacht pogrom of 1938-11, the union was no longer independently active, and was assimilated into the new Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland.