the National Socialist Teachers League, NSLB, which was located in Bayreuth. In 1937 the town was connected to the new Reichsautobahn.
Under Nazi dictatorship the synagogue of the Jewish Community in M�nzgasse was desecrated and looted on Kristallnacht but, due to its proximity to the Opera House it was not razed. Inside the building, which is once again used by a Jewish community as a synagogue, a plaque next to the Torah Shrine recalls the persecution and murder of Jews in the Shoa, which took the lives of at least 145 Jews in Bayreuth.
During the Second World War a subcamp of the Flossenb�rg concentration camp was based in the town, in which prisoners had to participate in physical experiments for the V-2. Wieland Wagner, the grandson of the composer, Richard Wagner, was the deputy civilian director there from September 1944 to April 1945. Shortly before the war's end branches of the People's Court (Volksgerichtshof) were to have been set up in Bayreuth.
On 5, 8 and 11 April 1945 about one third of the town, including many public buildings and industrial installations were destroyed by heavy air strikes, along with 4,500 houses. 741 people were also killed. On 14 April, the U.S. Army occupied the town.
After the war Bayreuth tried to part with its ill-fated past. It became part of the American Zone. The American military government set up a DP camp to accommodate so-called displaced persons (DP). Most of them came from Ukraine. The camp was supervised by the UNRRA.
The housing situation was very difficult at first: there were about 55,000 inhabitants in the town, many more than before the war began. This increase was primarily due to the high number of refugees and expellees. Even in 1948 more than 11,000 refugees were counted. In addition, because many homes had been destroyed due to the war, thousands of people were living in temporary shelters, even the festival restaurant next to the Festival Hall housed some 500 people
