An organisation of Jewish soldiers and officers who had fought with the German forces in World War I
Founded in February 1919 in Berlin, under the leadership of the Jewish officer Dr. Leo Loewenstein, the Union sought to refute the anti-Semitic propaganda that accused Jews of evading combat duty in the war, to commemorate those who had fallen, and to nurture German patriotism and Jewish pride among German Jews. In late 1932, the leaders of the Union presented President Hindenburg with a complete list of Jewish war dead-approximately 12,000 in number. In the first few months of Nazi rule, the leaders of the Reich Union, using their relations with Hindenburg, managed to exempt Jewish veterans of World War I and their families from the first anti-Semitic laws.
