As Germany marks the thirty-fifth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall this year, one verdict recalls the dark hours of the East German regime. On Monday, October 14, an 80-year-old former lieutenant of the Stasi (Ministry of State Security of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) between 1950 and 1990) was sentenced to ten years in prison by a Berlin court. The man named Martin Naumann was convicted of having shot dead, on March 29, 1974, Czeslaw Kukuczka, a 38-year-old Polish father of three, who was trying to cross into West Berlin. The court ruled that he had been the victim of an ambush organized by East German services. This is one of the rare sentences handed down against a former Stasi agent.
Czeslaw Kukuczka had gone that same day to the Polish embassy, then located near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, where he had threatened to detonate a bomb supposedly placed in his bag if he was not immediately authorized to cross to the West. Stasi agents, alerted by the embassy, then escorted the man to Friedrichstrasse station, one of the crossing points between the two parts of the city. After being examined, he was heading towards the tunnel leading to the West Berlin subway when he was shot. Investigation later revealed that she did not have any bomb in her bag.
The court found that Martin Naumann had not acted on his own initiative as he had received orders to lock the man up. “safe”but nevertheless he had executed it “mercilessly” – having shot him in the back when he was two meters away, when he could have simply immobilized him. Retired Martin Naumann remained silent until the end of the trial. His lawyer had requested acquittal, arguing that it had not been proven that he was the author of the shots. You can still appeal.
“Leave no trace”
The matter, revealed with the publication of Stasi files after the fall of the wall, remained unresolved for a long time, despite the fact that there were witnesses who witnessed the scene. According to the newspaper South German ZeitungPrecisely because the Polish authorities submitted an extradition request, after the discovery of new elements by historians in 2016, the case was reopened by German justice. For several decades, the victim’s wife and children did not know under what circumstances he had disappeared. Only fifty years later, his children and sister filed civil lawsuits.
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