Munich prosecutors blame far-right man for 1970 Jewish centre deaths

More than 56 years after an arson attack on a Jewish care home in Munich left seven Holocaust survivors dead, prosecutors said on Thursday they are convinced a lone far-right perpetrator was responsible.

The evidence clearly indicates that a man, who has since died, started the fire in the Jewish community centre on Reichenbachstrasse, the authority said. There are no indications that anyone else was involved, it added.

The fire broke out in the stairwell on February 13, 1970, shortly after an evening service at the synagogue ended. Residents of a care home housed there were trapped by the flames. Most of the around 30 people were rescued but seven died. Investigators said they were Holocaust survivors. Fifteen people were injured, four of them seriously.

The Munich public prosecutor general's office began investigations against unknown persons in April 2025 after a witness provided credible information about the suspected perpetrator, the authority said.

The renewed effort focused on possible additional participants in the attack, the public prosecutor's office said. 

However, investigators were unable to substantiate this. Instead, indications increasingly pointed to a lone perpetrator who was 25 at the time and was known to be far-right and anti-Semitic. But as the man died in 2020, a final legal assessment is not possible, the authority said. Prosecutors stressed that the presumption of innocence also applies posthumously.

Investigations had been conducted repeatedly over the decades. The federal public prosecutor's office had at one point focused on a left-wing extremist group but discontinued proceedings in 2017 citing insufficient evidence.