50 Years On, Ex-Stasi Officer Goes On Trial For Murder Of Pole

A former Stasi officer on Thursday denied the 50-year-old murder of a Polish man attempting to flee East Berlin, at the opening of a trial that could impact how communist-era killings are prosecuted in Germany

Berlin, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 14th Mar, 2024) A former Stasi officer on Thursday denied the 50-year-old murder of a Polish man attempting to flee East Berlin, at the opening of a trial that could impact how communist-era killings are prosecuted in Germany.

Martin Naumann, 80, spoke only to confirm his identity as a court in Berlin opened the hearing into his case.

The former officer in the East German secret police has rejected the charges brought against him for the murder of Czeslaw Kukuczka at a border crossing between East and West Berlin in 1974, his lawyer said.

The delay in bringing the legal proceedings illustrates the challenges Germany has had in delivering justice to victims of the communist government.

At least 140 people were killed trying to cross the Berlin Wall between 1961 and 1989, and many hundreds more trying to exit East Germany by other means.

The border guards and other East German officials who have faced trial so far have usually been charged with manslaughter -- a lesser charge on which the statute of limitations would have run out in Naumann's case.

The former Stasi man is accused of gunning down Kukuczka on March 29, 1974, as the Pole passed through the border control post at Friedrichstrasse train station, one of the best-known crossing points in divided Berlin.

- Dummy bomb -

Earlier that same day, Kukuczka had gone to the Polish embassy in East Berlin to demand passage to the West, according to prosecutors.

Kukuczka threatened to detonate a dummy explosive if his demands were not met.

Details of the incident are laid out in archival work by historians Hans-Hermann Hertle and Filip Ganczak.

According to the research, staff at the Polish embassy alerted the East German secret police to Kukuczka's threat.

Stasi officials are said to have led Kukuczka to believe he would be allowed passage to the West, handing him an exit visa and conveying him to the Friedrichstrasse crossing.

But instead of letting him leave, the officers were under orders to render Kukuczka "harmless", employing a common euphemism in Stasi documents for the elimination of political opponents, according to the historians.

Kukuczka had passed through two of the three control points at the border and "thought he had reached his goal" when he was shot, prosecutors said.

Naumann, concealed behind a "screen", hit Kukuczka in the back from a distance of two metres (6.5 feet), they said.

The killing was witnessed by a school group from West Germany, which was waiting to cross the border behind Kukuczka.

Martina S., 65, a teenager at the time of the incident, told the court she saw the victim go a few metres "in the underpass, behind him from the left was a man in a dark coat, then a shot, and the (victim) collapsed".

And then "people in uniform closed the door, and we couldn't see anything else," she added.

- Historic trial -

The victim's three children and sister are joint plaintiffs in the case but will not attend the trial.

Naumann was "the last link in a chain of command" that ordered the killing, Hans-Juergen Foerster, lawyer for Kukuczka's daughter, said ahead of the trial.

Foerster and the family want the investigation into Kukuczka's death to be extended to include all those who might have had a hand in the murder and to have them called as witnesses.

"Some are still alive," Foerster told AFP, though two of the officers involved have already died.

Even if the two officers were still living, it would "not have been easy" to have them stand trial for the killing, Daniela Muenkel, the head of the Stasi archives in Berlin, told AFP.

"It was not them who carried out the orders," Muenkel said.

Naumann's trial, which will be recorded for its historical importance, comes at the end of years of investigation.

A European arrest warrant for the former Stasi officer was issued by Poland in 2021, which spurred German authorities to pick up the stalled case.

Naumann was finally charged with murder in October 2023.