A verdict is expected in the trial of a former East German secret police officer accused of the murder of a Polish firefighter at a Berlin border crossing 50 years ago.
Martin Naumann, now 80, is accused of shooting Czesław Kukuczka in the back at point-blank range on March 29, 1974, as Kukuczka walked to the last of a series of management posts in a transit zone of the divided city. , after having told him that he had freedom of movement. pass to escape to West Berlin.
The truth about Kukuczka's death was never revealed to his family. Instead, his cremated remains were sent in an urn to his wife, Emilia, weeks later, after which he was buried in a private ceremony by his family in southern Poland.
It took the tenacious investigative skills of a historian steeped in the history of the Ministry of State Security (MfS), or Stasi, which was the secret police and intelligence service of the communist GDR, to unearth the details of the case years later.
Stefan Appelius found documents about the shooting and subsequent attempts to cover it up in former Stasi archives and located Kukuczka's family in Poland. They alerted the Polish justice system to the case, which issued a European arrest warrant against Naumann in 2021, putting pressure on German investigative authorities to reopen the case after decades of inaction. Naumann was charged with murder in October of last year.
Details specifically linking Naumann to the murder only emerged in 2016, after documents destroyed by Stasi officers in the last days of the regime to cover up their activities were reconstructed by a digital jigsaw machine made especially for the purpose.
Naumann, from Leipzig, who had repeatedly denied the charges against him, is one of the first former East German officials to be charged with murder rather than manslaughter. Prosecutors have asked for a 12-year prison sentence for him, highlighting the “particularly treacherous” feature of the murder, namely that Kukuczka was shot when he believed he had achieved freedom.
The court heard how Kukuczka, a 38-year-old father of three from the mountain village of Kamienica, near Krakow, in southern Poland, had entered the Polish embassy in East Berlin, demanding permission to go to West Germany. . He had threatened to detonate a fake explosive that he claimed would have blown up the embassy and other buildings if they rejected him.
Research by historians Filip Gańczak and Hans-Hermann Hertle found that embassy staff had contacted the Stasi to inform them of Kukuczka's threat. In apparent collusion with the embassy, Stasi officials met the Pole, gave him an exit visa and five West German marks, and took him to the nearby Friedrichstraße border point. While Kukuczka was under the impression that he would soon be a free man, Stasi agents had been ordered to “render him harmless,” using a euphemism commonly used for the murder of political opponents.
Naumann, hiding behind a strategically placed screen at the station, allegedly shot Kukuczka in the back from a distance of about two meters, after he had crossed two of the three checkpoints.
According to the Stasi report on the incident, the “operational forces” managed at around three in the afternoon to “deliver [Kukuczka] harmless without attracting any special attention from other outgoing travelers.”
Naumann was described by a lawyer for Kukuczka's daughter, who was 18 at the time of her father's death, as “the last link in a chain of command” that led to the murder, but he was the one who ultimately carried out the order. . was claimed.
Naumann's lawyer, Andrea Liebscher, has insisted that her client is innocent and that there is no evidence that he carried out the shooting or that the killing could be considered murder rather than involuntary manslaughter, the statute of limitations for which would have already passed. prescribed. He said that after making the bomb threat, Kukuczka was not an innocent party and “should have expected authorities to intervene with weapons.”
Naumann typically appeared in court wearing a black corduroy cap and sneakers, clutching an office file to cover his face. He was described as having lived a life of quiet retirement for decades in the suburbs of Leipzig, until his past caught up with him in 2016. He spoke only once to confirm his identity.
Among those who testified were three retirees who were teenagers at the time and who were on a school trip from West Germany to communist East Berlin. Petra L, 65, a retired teacher from Hesse, recalled spending a “typical day” in East Berlin before returning to her classmates through border controls in the heavily guarded underground tunnel at Friedrichstraße station. A man wearing sunglasses caught his attention, he said. “Strange period, because we were underground.” She told the court how the man had pulled out a gun and shot at a man who had walked past him with a briefcase, and recalled how those around her “put their hands to their mouths in shock.”
“Suddenly doors opened where there were none before, and uniformed people came out and sealed the passage,” he said.
On the sidelines of the trial, Gańczak said that while authorities in communist Poland and their counterparts in East Germany (GDR) had tried to cover up the murder, they disagreed on how to present it. “While the Polish side wanted to make it look like Kukuczka had taken his own life, the GDR did not agree… According to an abbreviated version of events they prepared, there was an incident at the border crossing, which resulted in Kukuczka being killed. delicate. The family was not allowed to ask any further questions.”
In one version it was said that Kukuczka was armed, but there is no evidence to support this. The explosive he was supposedly carrying was non-existent.
Kukuczka was taken to the Stasi prison hospital in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen, where he was pronounced dead after bleeding to death, according to an autopsy.
Reflecting its historical importance, the trial is being recorded, as have some Holocaust-related trials in recent years.
Kukuckza's family, including his sister and daughter, now 68, do not know to this day what their father had planned. According to anecdotes, he had longed for a life in Florida.
An estimated 140 or more people died trying to cross the Berlin Wall, which divided the city between 1961 and 1989. The few East German officials and border guards who have so far faced prosecution for the deaths have mostly been charged. of involuntary manslaughter.
Senior officials have often escaped justice. Attempts to try Erich Mielke, head of the Stasi from 1957 to 1989, repeatedly failed until, in 1993, he was sentenced to six years in prison for the 1931 murder of two police officers when he was a young communist fighter.