Munich prosecutors identify deceased neo-Nazi as perpetrator of 1970 Jewish care home arson

New witness testimony breaks decades-long impasse

Munich prosecutors announced on Thursday that they have resolved one of West Germany's most severe post-war antisemitic crimes, identifying a deceased neo-Nazi as the sole perpetrator of the 13 February 1970 arson attack on a Jewish retirement home. The investigation into the blaze at Reichenbachstrasse 27 had remained unresolved for more than 56 years before new evidence surfaced in April 2025. Bavarian authorities reopened the case after a woman contacted investigators following the death of a relative who had been in close contact with the suspect. Police state security units and prosecutors reviewed archival files and re-interviewed witnesses, establishing robust grounds for the suspect's responsibility.

Senior Public Prosecutor Andreas Franck, who serves as the antisemitism commissioner for the Bavarian justice system, addressed the significance of the findings during a press briefing.

We are speaking here of one of the worst attacks against Jewish life since the Second World War.

The 1970 arson at Reichenbachstrasse

On the evening of 13 February 1970, between 20:40 and 20:55, the attacker entered the building owned by the Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria. The perpetrator used a white aluminium Aral fuel canister wrapped in brown packing paper, which contained up to 20 litres of a petrol and oil two-stroke mixture. Fuel was poured across multiple sections of the four-storey wooden staircase and ignited. The central wooden structure acted like a chimney, rapidly drawing flames and thick smoke up to the top floor and cutting off the primary escape route for the residents.

Seven residents, all Holocaust survivors aged between 59 and 71, died in the fire, including Max Blum, who jumped from a window, and Leopold Gimpel. Another 15 residents suffered injuries, four of them severe, while firefighters rescued others from the roof using turntable ladders.

Evidence points to dead neo-Nazi suspect

The identified suspect is Bernd V., who was 25 years old at the time of the attack and died in 2020 at the age of 75. Witnesses testified that roughly 15 minutes before the fire erupted, Bernd V. walked past the Reichenbachstrasse building with an acquaintance and declared that Jewish people had everything while he had nothing, stating his intention to set them on fire. Contemporaries and former classmates described him as fixated on Adolf Hitler, noting that he listened to Nazi speeches on vinyl records and conducted shooting practice at the Obersalzberg site near Berchtesgaden.

Bernd V. had a documented history of violence and antisemitism dating to his youth, including a juvenile conviction in the 1960s for detonating explosives in two Munich telephone kiosks, as well as a subsequent conviction for stealing the Blutenburger Madonna.

Senior Public Prosecutor Franck noted that the totality of evidence gathered by police and prosecutors establishes clear liability.

If you ask me as a prosecutor and as someone who scoured these files together with the police state security division and formed a picture, I would speak of a clear probability that we have identified at least one of the perpetrators.

Legal closure without prosecution

Because Bernd V. died six years before the conclusion of the inquiry, German authorities cannot bring formal criminal charges against him, and the post-mortem presumption of innocence remains in effect. Federal prosecutors had previously explored leads involving left-wing extremist groups before formally shelving the proceedings in 2017 due to insufficient evidence. The Bavarian state prosecution confirmed that the 2025 inquiry examined potential accomplices but uncovered no evidence that any other living individuals participated in carrying out the arson. With the primary suspect dead and no co-conspirators identified, Bavarian authorities have formally concluded their investigation into the attack.