A deadly arson attack on a Jewish old people’s home in Munich was considered evidence of antisemitism in the radical left for 55 years. Now, earlier indications of a right-wing extremist perpetrator are becoming concrete.
For a detonation on 9 November 1969, the domestic secret service informer Peter Urbach, after having previously distributed Molotov cocktails and pistols amongst the student movement, deposited a bomb in a drinks vending machine at the Berlin Jewish Community. Around 250 people were in the building for the commemoration of the November pogroms of 1938 – but the explosive did not detonate. Whilst the urban guerrilla group “Tupamaros Westberlin” claimed responsibility for the attack, its co-founder Dieter Kunzelmann wrote in his autobiography that such an action was “out of the question in view of Germany’s past”.
Four months later – according to the previous interpretation – an attack from the same milieu is said to have been carried out on a former old people’s home of the Israelite Religious Community on Munich’s Reichenbachstrasse. The perpetrator had distributed accelerant in the stairwell and set it alight; five men and two women suffocated in the smoke or burnt to death in their rooms on this 13 February 1970, a Sabbath. The attack on Jews, attributed to the “Tupamaros München”, was the worst since the end of the Second World War.
Both acts were considered by the Federal Republic of the 1970s as evidence of how anti-Jewish resentments had also gained entry into the militant left under the guise of anti-Zionism. The thesis was kept alive with reference to the Munich attack well into the 2010s, particularly by the Springer press and the movement researcher Wolfgang Kraushaar.
Now, however, it is receiving a considerable blow: as “Der Spiegel” reported last week, the arson attack with multiple fatalities is probably attributable to Bernd V. The “man with the ‘Hitler tic’”, born in 1944, was a repeatedly convicted neo-Nazi from Munich, the news magazine writes.
A close relative had been part of a “burglary gang” of the suspect at the time, a witness told investigators. The woman is said to have initially approached Andreas Franck, senior Public Prosecutor and antisemitism commissioner of the Bavarian justice system, in January 2025, Bavarian Broadcasting reported at the time. “Der Spiegel” now provides details of her statement.
On the evening of the arson attack, the group had accordingly attempted unsuccessfully to break into a Munich jeweller’s shop. Thereupon, V. is said to have announced his intention to set fire to the Jewish community centre located in the immediate vicinity. An earlier witness statement regarding the appearance and age of the perpetrator at the time fits Bernd V.
Even as a teenager, V. is said to have attracted attention through explosive attacks; later he is said to have committed serious burglaries and art theft, and also possessed Nazi memorabilia and weapons. “Der Spiegel” explains his “Hitler tic” through the ideological influence of an SS uncle.
Although the statement of a former fellow prisoner was also available regarding V. as a possible perpetrator, the lead was not consistently pursued in the 1970s. Following the witness statement of 2025, the Munich Public Prosecutor General’s Office initially opened a review procedure and now a new murder investigation. However, criminal prosecution is no longer possible: Bernd V. died in 2020, as did his alleged accomplices.
The Public Prosecutor, however, wants to investigate whether there were people with knowledge or helpers. Furthermore, it must be clarified why indications of V. as perpetrator were ignored when he could still have been brought to account, demanded Clara Bünger, domestic policy spokesperson of the left-wing parliamentary group, on Sunday on social media: “And who in which authorities knew what when.”
Twenty-five indications of suspected persons from the area of right-wing motivated political crime had been received by the Bavarian State Criminal Police Office, the Federal Government had stated in response to a Left Party inquiry in 2020. Seized evidence such as a petrol canister was no longer available. “The whereabouts of these objects could not be traced”, the response states. What the German secret services had known about the act could not be communicated to the questioners “due to unreasonable effort”.
Only in September 2025 had Chancellor Friedrich Merz (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) brought the Munich attack back into public consciousness: at the reopening of the synagogue, which is also located on Munich’s Reichenbachstrasse and was only restored after standing empty for decades, he referred to the memorial plaque a few metres away.
Merz, whose speech caused mockery in right-wing circles because of his tears, did not address theories about the perpetrator of the arson attack – perhaps because he had already been briefed about the suspicion against Bernd V. The Chancellor also did not name the names of the victims of 13 February 1970: Siegfried Offenbacher, Rosa Drucker, Regina Becher, Dawid Jakubowicz, Georg Pfau, Leopold Gimpel and Max Blum, born in Bavaria, Breslau, Poland or the then Soviet Union, were between 59 and 71 years old at the time of the act.
Published in German in „nd“.
Image: Memorial site at Munich’s Gärtnerplatz. On the grounds, Chancellor Friedrich Merz gave a tearful speech last year at the opening of the restored synagogue (Wikipedia).
