It was after the 1972 Olympic bombing the worst anti-Semitic attack in the Federal Republic. And yet the murder of David Jakubowicz, Leopold Arie Leib Gimpel, Regina Rivka Becher, Siegfried Offenbacher, Max Meir Blum, Rosa Drucker and Georg Eljakim Pfau was more or less forgotten for a long time. Seven people who survived the Holocaust and then died – on February 13, 1970 – in a fire that someone had set in the Jewish old people’s home on Munich’s Reichenbachstrasse.
It was Sabbath. Friday evening. The fire brigade was quickly on site and was able to save many residents. Not the seven. Six of them died in the flames; 71-year-old Max Meir Blum tried to escape by jumping from the fourth floor, but did not survive the fall.
It quickly became clear that it was murder, that someone had deliberately set the fire. Also the course of events: The perpetrator must have entered the community center of the Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria, which was still here in the Glockenbachviertel at around 9 p.m. Nobody stopped him. The fact that Jewish institutions in Germany are protected by police around the clock was only a consequence of the attack.
The perpetrator took the elevator to the fourth floor, shut it down, then went back down on foot, spilling a mixture of gasoline and oil in the stairwell. When he reached the bottom, he set it on fire and fled. The fire spread very quickly and the people in the house were trapped. The old people’s home and some student accommodation were located on the upper floors.
“With love for the leader”
However, investigators spent years searching for the perpetrator in the dark. For decades. Palestinian groups were suspected, and later especially left-wing extremists – for example the Tupamaros, a terrorist gang around Fritz Teufel and Dieter Kunzelmann, which, among other things, planted an explosive device in the Jewish community of Berlin in 1969.
Investigations were started and then shelved. A right-wing extremist background was not ruled out, but was never really the focus of the investigation. Until last year, when the public prosecutor’s office took up the case again after a tip-off to the anti-Semitism commissioner of the Bavarian judiciary, Andreas Franck. The trail, it was said at the time, led to the right.
This has now apparently been confirmed. Again Spiegel reported, everything now indicates that the then 26-year-old Bernd V., a Munich criminal and “ardent anti-Semite,” was behind the attack. Apparently no one had the man on their radar during previous investigations. Loud Spiegel His acquaintances said he had a “Hitler tick”; He once stated in court that he was raised in “love for the leader” by an uncle who was a strong caregiver.
Bernd V. had an extensive criminal record: Even as a teenager he blew up telephone booths, and later especially safes. The theft of the famous, 500-year-old “Blutenburg Madonna” was spectacular. V. and two accomplices stole the wooden statue during a break-in at a Munich chapel. The case received particular attention because of Madonna’s hiding place: V. had given it to the popular Munich actor Walter Sedlmayr in a package for safekeeping, although without his knowledge. Nevertheless, V. initially accused Sedlmayr of being the principal of the theft when the trio of burglars were exposed after three months.
Suspect died in 2020
However, the investigators only came across V. as the suspected arsonist on Reichenbachstrasse after a witness contacted the Munich Public Prosecutor’s Office about a year ago. The woman reported what a close relative had confided in her: He had tried to rob a jewelry store on Gärtnerplatz with Bernd V. and another accomplice on the evening of February 13th – but without success.
Bernd V. then became very angry and began to curse Jews. He then pointed to the Jewish community center, which was just a few steps away from Gärtnerplatz, and said that he would now set it on fire.
Even though all members of the burglar gang were now dead – Bernd V. himself died in 2020 – the public prosecutor’s office reopened an investigation and put together pieces of the puzzle that supported the suspicion against V. At that time, witnesses had seen a suspicious man near the crime scene whose description matched V.
And then there was another clue – which at the same time answers questions and raises new ones: Like that Spiegel writes, a prisoner is said to have contacted the authorities years after the attack and reported that his cellmate, Bernd V., had indicated in a conversation with him that he was responsible for the fire. There is still no answer to the question of why this tip was apparently not seriously pursued at the time.