During World War II Menuhin gave more than 500 performances for American and allied soldiers. He was the first person to perform in the Paris Opéra after the war and he went with the composer Benjamin Britten to perform for the people who were prisoners in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, after they were made free in April 1945. He returned to Germany in 1947 to perform with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra with the conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler. Many Jews said he should not have done this, because they said that Furtwängler had played for the Nazis who had killed so many Jews, but Menuhin said it was the right thing to do.