Arson attack on the old people's home of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde in Munich

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The arson attack on the old people's home of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Munich and Upper Bavaria took place in Munich on Friday evening, February 13, 1970. Seven Jewish residents were killed by him . Two of them were survivors of the Nazi extermination camps ; all of them had survived the Nazi era .

The arson attack has not yet been resolved, but it is unanimously classified as anti-Semitic mass murder . Follow-up investigations by the Federal Public Prosecutor carried out from 2013 to 2017 did not reveal any new leads. The police destroyed some of the evidence in the 1990s.

course

The target of the attack was the Jewish community center of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Munich and Upper Bavaria at the synagogue on Reichenbachstrasse Munich in the Munich district of Ludwigsvorstadt-Isarvorstadt . A retirement home was located on the upper floors of the front building. Students also lived in some of his attic apartments. Unknown people entered the building before 9:00 p.m., took the elevator upstairs, distributed an oil-gasoline mixture on each floor of the wooden staircase and set it on fire at the exit. Due to the chimney effect, the fire spread rapidly to the upper floors and prevented escape through the stairwell. At 8:58 p.m., a neighbor alerted the fire brigade, whose first fire engine arrived at 9 p.m. Because the Sabbath had started, 50 people were in the building when it was attacked. Most of them were able to leave it in time, with the help of the Munich fire brigade and neighbors. Those trapped in their rooms could only escape through the roof.

Victim

Five men and two women died; six of them suffocated or burned in the fire, one man died jumping from the fourth floor. A memorial wall in the synagogue on Reichenbachstrasse gives their names:

  • Rivka Regina mug (59),
  • Meir Max Blum (71),
  • Pink printer (59),
  • Arie Leib Leopold Gimpel (50),
  • David Jakubovicz (60),
  • Siegfried Offenbacher (71),
  • Eliakim Georg Pfau (63).

Jakubovicz and Pfau had survived the Nazi extermination camps. Jakubovicz had temporarily postponed his departure to Israel, planned for February 13, 1970, to February 15 because of the Sabbath. He wanted to spend the last years of his life in Israel. Offenbacher, the community librarian, had returned to Munich immediately after the Second World War . Blum had come to Munich from the USA a year earlier to spend his old age there. He died immediately after his jump. One of the trapped people called out of one of the windows in agony: "We are gassed , we are burned!"

15 people were injured. Most of the books in the community library were burned and destroyed.

The attacks of February 1970 changed the situation of Jews living in the Federal Republic of Germany permanently and were perceived as a turning point. Since then, Jewish and Israeli institutions throughout the Federal Republic and other European states have been placed under increased police protection. Until then, the Jewish citizens had successfully fought against this.

First reactions

The attack caused great consternation, sadness and indignation throughout the Federal Republic of Germany. Munich Rabbi Hans Grünewald initially assumed an accident: “We are such a small Jewish community in Munich. I just don't want to believe that this is arson. ”A condolence list was on display in the burned-out nursing home. The Lord Mayor of Munich, Hans-Jochen Vogel, appealed to all citizens of the city to register there: "Munich residents, give these dead your last respects!"

After arson was proven, the Central Council of Jews in Germany demanded "consequences against wire-pullers and organizations [...] that instigate such crimes". Maximilian Taucher, the then president of the Jewish community in Munich, said during the funeral speech that the attack was directed not only against the Munich Jews, but against all Jews in Germany and around the world. Hans Lamm , who became his successor shortly afterwards, made no assumptions about the identity and origin of the perpetrators.

The highest representatives of the federal government were present at the funeral service . Federal President Gustav Heinemann condemned the act: It was particularly disgusting because the victims had suffered so much in the past. Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt declared that everything would be done to find the perpetrator or perpetrators. Federal Minister of the Interior Hans-Dietrich Genscher promised:

“The German people will never again allow violence and terror to rule their territory . It will never again allow certain groups of people to be placed outside the community. All of you who are here today are witnesses to that promise. "

The Bundestag planned to start its meeting on 17 February 1970, the victim. The AStA of the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich condemned the act as a crime and canceled a planned demonstration against the visit of the Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban .

Heinz Galinski , the then chairman of the Jewish community in Berlin , suspected left-wing perpetrators. In a comment he wrote that "the threatening escalation" had been announced on November 9, 1969 during an attempted attack on the Jewish parish hall in West Berlin during a commemoration ceremony for the November 1938 pogroms . After this failed, the assassins in Munich “succeeded” in what they had planned in Berlin.

The authorities offered a reward of 100,000 DM for the apprehension of the perpetrators, the highest sum in German criminal history to date. The Federal Government, the Bavarian State Government , the City of Munich and Axel Springer Verlag each donated a quarter of this amount. Just two days after the attack, the newspaper Bild am Sonntag , which belongs to Springerverlag, accused the West German student movement of the 1960s and linked its protest actions against a publishing house from 1968 with the murder of Jews: "The day before yesterday a newspaper truck burned and today Jews are burned in an old people's home." Bavaria's Prime Minister Franz Josef Strauss described the arson attack as the result of social-liberal government policy , which no longer had crime and criminality under control.

Investigations

The city police Munich presented as evidence a 20-liter canister labeled " Aral " safe from a gasoline-oil mixture was poured into the stairwell, and a piece of kraft paper into which the canister was wrapped when he was carried into the house. No evidence was found at the crime scene that more than one person was involved in the crime. This was counted as an assassination attempt because of the gasoline that was deliberately distributed throughout the stairwell . To clarify the situation, the police set up a special commission , which was reinforced to 60 people by officials from the Federal Criminal Police Office . The special commission examined the 300 or so Bavarian immigration associations, of which around 30 were considered politically extreme, as well as radical groups and loners who were noticed at the time through leaflets or statements, including all around 100 members of the anti-Israeli organizations “Munich Palestine Committee” and “General Union of Palestinians Students". Hundreds of tips were received from the population, most of which were of little value.

In 1970, the investigators initially suspected right-wing extremists or Palestinians as possible perpetrators. At that time, a group of Palestinian terrorists from Munich organized a series of attacks on passenger planes flying to Israel (February 10, 17 and 21, 1970; 48 dead). Three Palestinians arrested on February 10th confessed to the plane attacks, but denied having anything to do with the arson attack on the Jewish old people's home. The Palestinian terrorist group Action Organization for the Liberation of Palestine (AOLP) claimed responsibility for the attack on an aircraft belonging to the Israeli airline El Al at Munich-Riem airport on February 10, 1970. Its leader Issam Sartawi said on February 19, 1970 on ZDF that his organization has nothing to do with the arson attack on Reichenbachstrasse. On March 4, 1970, however, the German consulate in Kuwait received a handwritten letter of confession from the AOLP: The deed was carried out from Munich with the help of young Germans.

An anonymous letter accused an NPD official of being involved in the attack. According to the Munich public prosecutor's office, it turned out to be falsified after searches, comparative tests and examination of documents.

The Tupamaros Munich distanced themselves on 20 February 1970, a conspiracy theory of suspicion: "We do not make innocent. Only people who are interested in starting the witch hunt on the enemies of US Zionist imperialism can have started this new Reichstag fire in the old people's home . ”On the same day, a letter signed with her abbreviation TM to a press agency demanded freedom for a comrade and threatened her his prosecutor. On February 23, strangers threw Molotov cocktails into the living room of the Munich magistrate who had condemned the activist.

Therefore, on March 8, 1970, the special commission suspected Fritz Teufel , the founder of Tupamaros Munich, and Dieter Kunzelmann , the founder and head of Tupamaros West Berlin , as possible perpetrators of the Munich arson attack. They were put out to be searched. Teufel was arrested on June 12, 1970 on other charges, and Kunzelmann on July 19. He found evidence of contacts with Palestinians and considerations about spying on airports, but no evidence of the Munich arson attack. In no suspected case, the evidence was sufficient for an indictment. The investigation was discontinued without result.

In July 2012, the Munich public prosecutor stated that a witness had claimed that he could provide decisive information about the attackers. Although his statements were partially false, investigations are being investigated. To do this, the wanted files from 1970 were fetched from the police archives and wanted to examine the fingerprints found on the petrol can for DNA material. It turned out that the police had misplaced the adhesive tape with the fingerprints. The public prosecutor shortly afterwards emphasized that they had known the witness since 2007, that his information had proven to be incorrect and that there was no promising new lead.

On August 19, 2013, the federal prosecutor took over the investigation because the arson attack was presumably directed against the Jews as a whole. She suspected a connection with the attack on the Munich magistrate on February 23, 1970. In July 2012, the witness confessed to being involved in it and stated that he knew the main perpetrators. With reference to this, the Federal Prosecutor's Office initially stated that according to the current state of the investigation, the “previously unknown perpetrators” came from the Tupamaros and the “Aktion Südfront München”. In November 2017, the Federal Public Prosecutor stopped the investigation because they had "failed to clarify the fact". He made it clear that they had also looked again for evidence of right-wing extremist perpetrators.

On March 25, 2020, the federal government replied to a parliamentary question from the left that the protection of the Constitution's possible knowledge of the attack would not be investigated. The evaluation former acts by undercover agents was because in each case the state's confidentiality interests must be weighed against the right to information of the Bundestag staff too costly. The responsible investigators had not requested files from the federal and state intelligence services. The Federal Prosecutor General also did not ask for the identities of informants from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Of the 277 references from the population at the time, 199 had turned out to be “real traces”. The LKA Bayern assigned 80 of them to the “politically motivated foreign crime”, 23 to the left-wing extremist, 25 to the right-wing extremist area. However, no “concrete and reliable suspicion” could be derived from any evidence. No fingerprints were found on the petrol canister destroyed in the 1990s. The government could not answer why other pieces of evidence disappeared from the evidence chamber of the LKA Bayern.

Contemporary classifications

Social scientists and historians rank the unsolved arson attack with other acts of violence at the time:

Political scientist Hans-Karl Rupp recalled that the Munich arson attack took place only months after the start of the social-liberal government coalition that wanted to normalize relations with Israel. According to the anti-Semitism researcher Werner Bergmann , the main social issue at the time was the confrontation with the APO and the student movement. The New Left did the state of Israel after the Six-Day War, increasingly in its critique of imperialism included, and Palestinian terror groups had with their attacks against Jewish and Israeli targets anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism inseparable. The historian Michael Brenner works out that the terror created a feeling of threat for the Jews living in Munich, reinforced by the election successes of the NPD at the time.

In 2005, the historian Wolfgang Kraushaar succeeded in unmasking Albert Fichter as the main culprit in the attack on November 9, 1969 in West Berlin. Until then, Fichter belonged to the Tupamaros West Berlin and had deposited the time bomb , which then did not explode. His group then confessed to the attack. Dieter Kunzelmann is considered its likely initiator. He had boasted that he had "learned exactly how to make time bombs" in October 1969 at Fatah in Jordan . In April 1970, in a bogus “letter from Amman ” that appeared in the scene magazine Agit 883 , he called for “armed struggle” and for solidarity with the goals of Fatah, which only the “Jewish death” caused by the Holocaust prevented. He called for Palestinian “death squads” like the one at Munich-Riem Airport to be replaced by “better organized, more targeted” German guerrilla fighters. He also described the Munich arson attack as a “Zionist massacre” with the aim of using fear terror to force the Jews living in Germany to emigrate to Israel. In this way he blamed “ Zionists ” (Jews) for the mass murder in a typical perpetrator-victim reversal.

In 2012, Kraushaar compiled all the evidence in another book that, in his opinion, spoke in favor of the Tupamaros Munich's involvement in the attack there. Even Georg M. Hafner documentary of July 2012, participated in the Kraushaar as a consultant, renewed this suspicion and called Kunzelmann contacts with Fatah, a statement Gerhard Müller from 1976 and other statements by former RAF -members as references to the Tupamaros Munich.

Bommi Baumann , a former member of the wandering hash rebels and the June 2 movement, however , stated in an interview in May 2013: “They weren't leftists”. Kunzelmann told him that in February 1970 he called Fritz Teufel, who had denied any involvement. At that time, the Berlin Tupamaros themselves did not believe in the perpetrators of their Munich comrades, but inquired there and made sure. Kunzelmann was expected to do such a thing, but for Fritz Teufel he, Baumann, put his "hand in the fire".

The historian Olaf Kistenmacher suspected in 2018 that several people started the fire because of the fire accelerators that were distributed. He recalled that the letters of confession usual in the left-wing radical scene were missing here, unlike the previous attempt at the attack on the Jewish parish hall in Berlin. The West Berlin Tupamaros' commitment to this was typical of the anti-Semitism of the left at the time, so that even the SDS suspected left-wing perpetrators in Munich. But the Federal Prosecutor's Office also investigated the right-wing extremist scene again from 2013 to 2017. All seven victims were Holocaust survivors. The target of a Jewish facility with Holocaust survivors itself speaks for right-wing extremists. The attack was largely forgotten because the 1972 Olympic hostage-taking overshadowed it. However, he could not imagine that "there is no longer anyone who knows a perpetrator".

In 2019 Christian Springer sent a video call to the perpetrators or those who did not know what to do to come forward and investigate the attack.

Memory container for the 50th anniversary on Gärtnerplatz, February 2020
The container with the building of the attack in the background

Commemoration

On the 50th anniversary of the attack on February 13, 2020, on the initiative of Christian Springer, a container with photographs and information about the attack as well as a list of those murdered was set up on the neighboring Gärtnerplatz .

Richard C. Schneider , then 13 years old , experienced the attack when his bar mitzvah party in the restaurant of the building in question was canceled due to the fire and everyone had to flee. His parents had previously had the restaurant renovated until the fire destroyed it. He classified this then as now (February 2020) as an attack on all Jews in Germany, which had destroyed his sense of home and that of the entire synagogue community. The older people killed also belonged to the community. The fact that precisely these survivors of the Shoah were killed triggered a feeling of “It caught up with them in Germany”. Despite the general shock, the community was not really surprised because the generation of Nazis was still present. Immediately after the attack, his family discussed “stay or go?”. Although they decided to stay, the attack made it clear to the younger generation that they were “on unsafe territory” in Germany. The Jewish center was completely unguarded at the time because nobody expected such an attack. At that time there was no awareness of terrorism. There were political reasons for suspecting left-wing extremists in Bavaria : "Nazis as perpetrators, that would have been a catastrophe also in terms of foreign policy." The attack was quickly suppressed due to a lack of clarification and the 1972 Olympic attack. The community itself also soon built a new community hall. For him personally it is irrelevant whether the perpetrators were left-wing or right-wing extremists, because anti-Semitism always has the same consequences for Jews. But one has to discuss from which direction the threat is greater today. Demonstrations in front of ministries that did not protect synagogues from attacks like the attack in Halle (Saale) in 2019 are worthy of remembrance . It is not just about the Jews affected, but about liberal society.

literature

Web links

Commons : Memory container (Gärtnerplatz)  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Miryam Gümbel: A call to Shabbat: Forty years ago, strangers carried out an arson attack on the parish hall. Jewish General , February 11, 2010
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Wolfgang Kraushaar: Eleven days in February. Welt online, September 22, 2012
  3. ^ A b c d Jewish Telegraph Agency, February 16, 1970: Fire Kills Seven Elderly Jews; Pres. Heinemann Denounces Arsonists
  4. ↑ a b c A cold case that continues to smolder. Focus , July 2, 2012
  5. ↑ a b c d e f Fire without a hot lead: Outrage over the fire in the Jewish old people's home. Die Zeit , February 20, 1970
  6. ↑ Herta Garfinkiel: Library of the Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria. (December 1993) In: Bernhard Fabian (Hrsg.): Handbook of historical book stocks in Germany. Digitized by Günter Kükenshöner. Olms New Media, Hildesheim 2003
  7. ^ A b c Richard Bauer, Michael Brenner: Jewish Munich: From the Middle Ages to the Present. Beck, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-406-54979-9 , p. 209.
  8. ↑ a b Die Zeit, February 20, 1970: Outrage over attack: Fire in a Jewish old people's home not yet cleared up
  9. ↑ Charlotte Knobloch, Andrea Sinn: "And I live again on the Isar": Exile and return of the Munich Jew Hans Lamm. Oldenbourg, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-486-58395-3 , p. 157.
  10. ↑ Wolfgang Kraushaar: “When will the fight against the holy cow Israel finally begin?” Reinbek 2013, p. 146.
  11. ↑ Wolfgang Kraushaar: “When will the fight against the holy cow Israel finally begin?” Reinbek 2013, p. 98.
  12. ↑ a b pole in the fog. Der Spiegel , February 23, 1970
  13. ↑ Wolfgang Kraushaar: “When will the fight against the holy cow Israel finally begin?” Reinbek 2013, p. 147 f.
  14. ↑ Wolfgang Kraushaar: “When will the fight against the holy cow Israel finally begin?” Reinbek 2013, p. 120 f.
  15. ↑ Georg M. Hafner: Munich 1970. When terror came to us. (TV documentary, 57:19 min. – 57: 36 min.)
  16. ↑ Wolfgang Kraushaar: “When will the fight against the holy cow Israel finally begin?” Reinbek 2013, p. 139
  17. ↑ Wolfgang Kraushaar: “When will the fight against the holy cow Israel finally begin?” Reinbek 2013, p. 119.
  18. ↑ a b André Anchuelo: seven murder victims and still no trace. Jewish General, July 12, 2012
  19. ^ Attack on a Jewish retirement home: Prosecutors suspect perpetrators in the left-wing extremist milieu. Spiegel online, September 30, 2013
  20. ↑ Martin Krauss : Late investigations: attack on community center from 1970 is rolled up again. Jewish General, August 19, 2013
  21. ↑ Olaf Kistenmacher: Murder without a murderer. Jungleworld, December 21, 2017
  22. ↑ Michael Thaidigsmann: Anti-Semitism: No documents from the protection of the constitution. Jewish General, March 25, 2020
  23. ↑ a b Werner Bergmann: Anti-Semitism in Public Conflicts: Collective Learning in the Political Culture of the Federal Republic 1949–1989. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-525-37010-5 , p. 314.
  24. ^ A b Hans-Karl Rupp, Jochen Fischer: Politics after Auschwitz. Starting points, conflicts, consensus. An essay on the history of the Federal Republic. Lit Verlag, Münster 2005, ISBN 3-8258-7129-0 , p. 58.
  25. ^ Wolfgang Kraushaar: The bomb in the Jewish parish hall. Hamburger Edition , Hamburg 2005, ISBN 3-936096-53-8 , p. 164; Willi Winkler: The history of the RAF. Rowohlt, 2007, ISBN 978-3-87134-510-4 , p. 246.
  26. ↑ Götz Aly: Our fight: 1968 - an irritated look back. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 3-10-000421-3 , p. 162
  27. ↑ Aribert Reimann: Dieter Kunzelmann: Avant-gardist, protester, radical. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2009, ISBN 3-525-37010-5 , p. 249
  28. ↑ Gerrit Bartels: Contemporary history: the arsonists on the trail. Tagesspiegel, February 25, 2013
  29. ↑ Jochen Hieber: Left anti-Semitism and wasted time. FAZ, July 16, 2012; Susanne Knaul: Documentation on the radical left: hero of the prosecution. taz, July 17, 2012.
  30. ↑ Wolfgang Gast, Stefan Reinicke: "In retrospect, everyone is smarter". Interview with Bommi Baumann. taz, May 13, 2013.
  31. ^ Felix Müller: Assassination attempt on a Jewish old people's home: The forgotten attack. (Interview with Olaf Kistenmacher) Evening newspaper , February 6, 2018
  32. ^ Fatal arson attack on a Jewish retirement home. Bayerischer Rundfunk / ARD, February 13, 2019
  33. ↑ Felix Müller: AZ interview on the fire in the parish hall in 1970: Richard C. Schneider: "As if you see your parents' house destroyed". Evening newspaper Munich, February 12, 2020

Coordinates: 48 ° 7 ′ 50.5 ″  N , 11 ° 34 ′ 33.8 ″  E