BERLIN — An 80-year-old former officer with East Germany’s Stasi secret police was found guilty Monday of killing a 38-year-old Polish man at a border crossing in East Berlin 50 years ago.
By Kate Brady
While the defendant “did not commit the crime for personal reasons,” he “executed it mercilessly,” presiding judge Bernd Miczajka said in his verdict.
For more than six months, the pensioner — a slim man with white hair around the sides of his head — listened intently and quietly took notes during hearings. His defense attorney stated at the beginning of the trial that he denied the allegations.
According to the public prosecutor’s findings, on March 29, 1974, Czeslaw Kukuczka, a 38-year-old Polish father of three, was killed “with a targeted shot to the back from a hiding place” at the crossing point at Berlin’s Friedrichstrasse station — the busiest border crossing at the Berlin Wall.
The defendant, a Stasi officer at the time, was tasked with rendering Kukuczka “harmless” after the Pole threatened earlier that day to detonate a bomb in an attempt to secure his exit to the West. Stasi Archives show, however, that Kukuczka was bluffing and the briefcase did not contain a bomb.
The shooting, which took place in public and was witnessed by several schoolgirls waiting in line at the border crossing, was covered up in East Germany and was one of many cases of people killed trying to cross the Iron Curtain.
East Germany’s Ministry for State Security — Stasi for short — was one of the most sophisticated and oppressive intelligence networks in the world until it was disbanded after German reunification in 1990. Almost 35 years later, such was the historical significance of the case against Naumann that the trial was recorded and will be available to the state archives.
“It is more than the conviction of an individual perpetrator. It is a conviction, a guilty verdict against the Ministry for State Security for joint murder,” said Hans-Juergen Foerster, the lawyer for the Kukuczka family. “It is also a guilty verdict against the GDR government, which had such a secret service.”
The trial, largely based on historical documents and fading memories, also underlined the difficulties that Germany has faced in bringing former East German officials to justice. According to the 2007 publication “The Prosecution of GDR Injustice,” of all injustices in the German Democratic Republic, as East Germany was known, Stasi crimes had the highest acquittal rate, at 47.3 percent. Until now, suspects in killings by the former East German state had typically faced the lesser charge of manslaughter, based on the conclusion that the perpetrator was following an order rather than acting with “malice.”
“It’s legally difficult because you have to prove in each individual case that somebody intentionally wanted to murder somebody else. Or at the very least, callously risked the fact that the person might get killed,” said Katja Hoyer, a historian and author of “Beyond the Wall.”
At least 140 people were killed trying to escape over the Berlin Wall between 1961 and 1989, but in the 34 years since reunification, those responsible have rarely faced justice. Including the inner German border and the Baltic Sea, historians estimate that the total number of deaths linked to escape attempts is closer to 650.
Many of those responsible for East German injustices died soon after reunification in 1990. Even Stasi chief Erich Mielke, who was 81 when the Berlin Wall fell, evaded punishment after he was deemed unfit to stand trial in 1994.
Despite investigations after German reunification, Kukuczka’s killer was never caught, and in 2005, the case was closed. Berlin’s Public Prosecutor’s Office ruled that it could not “definitely identify one person as the perpetrator.”
Another decade passed before Polish and German historians uncovered new evidence in Stasi archives, which had been left in tatters by agents who had attempted to destroy files in January 1990.
Records that read as if lifted from a Cold War thriller showed that Naumann and 11 other men received medals for their “prudent, courageous and decisive actions, and their exemplary fulfillment of their duties in successfully averting a terrorist attack.”
According to a separate Stasi document, Naumann had “carried out this task carefully, courageously and resolutely and was able to neutralize the terrorist by using a firearm.”
Investigators previously assumed manslaughter, which was barred by that point by a statute of limitations. But prosecutors in the current case said the required murder criterion of “malice” was met because the victim was shot in the back from a hiding place and led to believe he was free to cross to the West.
Following persistent inquiries from Poland, a European warrant for Naumann was issued and the former Stasi officer was arrested in 2023 in the eastern city of Leipzig, where he had been enjoying his retirement.
Since March, the court has trawled through historical documents and called on witnesses to recall the events of five decades ago.
Polish historian Filip Ganczak, who helped piece together the events of March 29, 1974, said the fact that the trial took place is an important signal.
“It shows that even so many years after the fall of the Wall, judicial processing of communist rule in the GDR and perhaps in the Eastern Bloc as a whole is still possible.”
The defense still has the right to an appeal.
Stasi records showed that Naumann was a weapons specialist, and trained in combat sport. He was part of a special task force at Friedrichstrasse station and was repeatedly promoted. Internal reports praised his “commitment to the point of elimination” and “uncompromising action.”
A firefighter and builder, Kukuczka traveled from Poland to East Berlin at the beginning of March 1974, supposedly to spend the weekend there. But he dreamed of a new life far beyond the Iron Curtain in Florida. He reappeared weeks later on March 29 at the Polish Embassy in East Berlin, where he threatened to detonate an explosive stashed in a briefcase if he was not granted permission to leave East Germany.
But Kukuczka was bluffing.
Stasi archives show that Kukuczka’s briefcase did not in fact contain a bomb — only random items including a broken whiskey bottle, razor and needles and thread — and refute later claims by East German authorities that Kukuczka was also carrying a gun.
Kukuczka thought his plan had succeeded, was handed an exit visa and led to believe he would be granted permission to leave East Germany as Stasi officials accompanied him to the checkpoint at Friedrichstrasse train station.
As he passed the last checkpoint he was shot and later died at a clinic at Hohenschönhausen Stasi prison about six miles away.
