From the BBC:
“Ex-Stasi officer jailed for
1974 Berlin border killing”
(Czeslaw Kukuczka)
A former East German secret
police officer has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for murdering a Polish
man attempting to flee to West Berlin 50 years ago. The man, named as Martin
Manfred N in court papers, is now 80. He shot Czeslaw Kukuczka in the back at
Friedrichstrasse station in 1974, after he had entered the Polish embassy
claiming to be carrying a bomb and demanding to be allowed to leave to democratic
West Germany. Details of the killing remained unknown for decades after the
Stasi secret police shredded files relating to the case before communist East
Germany reunified with the West in 1990. Berlin prosecutors filed charges
against him in 2023 after persistent investigations by historians and Polish
authorities.
On 29 March 1974, 38-year-old
Kukuczka, a firefighter, entered the Polish embassy on East Berlin's Unter den
Linden boulevard with a briefcase. The father of three said - falsely - that he
was carrying a bomb. He demanded to be allowed to leave for West Berlin. Stasi
officers gave him an exit visa and some West German money and escorted him to
Friedrichstrasse station, which was still served by trains from the western
side of the city.
Kukuczka passed several border
checks inside the station. However, before he could make it to the western part
of the station, a man approached him from behind and shot him in the back. A
group of schoolchildren from Hesse in West Germany were among witnesses to the
killing. One gave evidence at the trial that she had seen a man shoot Kukuczka
before "people in uniform" sealed off the passage. Details of the
case were uncovered by historians, who tracked down related files in the Stasi
archives. Documents linking Naumann to the killing, which had been shredded,
were reconstituted using a purpose-built machine. Kukuczka's family was never
officially told of his fate. His ashes were sent to his wife some weeks after
he had been murdered. The case was brought to trial after Poland issued a
European arrest warrant for Naumann in 2021.
The trial has been seen as
holding special historical significance in Germany, similarly to trials of
surviving Holocaust perpetrators. Martin Manfred N always insisted on his
innocence. His lawyer has said there was no proof he carried out the killing. East
Germany was created from the parts of Germany occupied by the Soviet Union
after the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945. It was a communist dictatorship,
while West Germany - created from the American, British and French occupation
zones - was a capitalist, democratic state. In 1990, both countries reunified
to form modern Germany.
^ Slowly, but surely it seems the
Germans are starting to take bringing justice for the Victims of the East
German Communists now that 34 years have passed since the Collapse of Communism
(and 50 years since this Crime.) ^
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