In 1933, 9,005 Jews resided in Munich (1.2 percent of the city's population). Jews played a prominent role in Munich life. It was also the centre of the Nazi party, which was founded there in 1922. In Munich, the Voelkischer Beobachter, the Nazi newspaper, was published; and Julius Streicher conducted his anti-Semitic campaign. During the failed Nazi putsch in 1923, SA (Sturmabteilung Storm Troopers) men held many Jews hostage in the cellar of their headquarters. During the Nazi regime, the city's Jews suffered greatly. On May 12, 1933, the police confiscated property from 50 Jewish organisations. As a result of sharp protests in Berlin, some of the confiscated property was returned to its owners. SA and SS men, members of the Hitlerjugend, and employees of Streicher's newspaper - Der Stuermer - attacked Jewish-owned businesses and beat up Jews. Growing pressure was brought on Jews to liquidate their businesses; Der Stuermer published photographs and names of the customers of Jewish stores. The city government, too, joined in the campaign against the Jews, and in 1937 ordered all non-Jewish stores to display an "Aryan Store" sign, thereby circumventing the existing legal situation, which at the time did not permit Jewish stores to be identified as such. In reaction to the growing persecution, the Jewish Community Organisation established hospitals and social services; elementary, secondary, and vocational schools; an orchestra and a theatre; clubs; an adult education institute, and so on. In the period from March 1, 1933, to May 16, 1938, 3,574 Jews left Munich, 3,130 emigrating abroad. In early June of 1938, Hitler found that it was unacceptable for the Great Synagogue to be situated next door to the German Art House and ordered the synagogue to be torn down by July 8, "German Art Day." Many members of the Jewish community joined in saving the Torah scrolls and other religious objects. On Kristallnacht, the Orthodox Ohel Yaakov synagogue was burned down; the Beit ha-Midrash chapel and the Jewish library suffered the same fate. About one thousand Jewish males were rounded up and taken to Dachau. A very large number of Jewish institutions, businesses, and private residences were damaged. The next day, the city government accelerated the pace of "Aryanization." By the fall of 1941, some 1,500 Jewish apartments had been confiscated. Their former occupants were put to forced labour, assigned to construct a camp at Milbertshausen, a Munich suburb, for accommodating the dispossessed Munich Jews. It served as an assembly and transit camp for the Jews, prior to their deportation. On November 20, 1941, 980 Jews were deported from there to Riga, and on April 3, 1942, 343 were sent to the Piaski Ghetto, near Lublin. Prior to its liquidation that summer, the remaining Jews, some 300 in all, were moved to the Berg-am-Leim Ghetto. Of these, 113 were deported to Auschwitz in March 1943, and the remaining 40 Jews were moved to the Jewish community building in Munich. Between May and August 1942, 1,200 Jews from Munich were sent to Theresienstadt in twenty-four transports. At this time, there was an upsurge in the number of suicides. Another 105 Jews were taken to Theresienstadt between June 1943 and December 1944, and yet another 97, mostly persons of mixed blood or partners in mixed marriages, were sent there in February 1945. A total of 2,991 Jews were deported; of those who went to Theresienstadt, 297 returned after the war.
