A former East German secret police officer has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for the murder of a Polish man trying to flee to West Berlin 50 years ago.
The man, named Martin Manfred N in court papers, is now 80 years old. He shot Czeslaw Kukuczka in the back at Friedrichstrasse station in 1974, after he entered the Polish embassy claiming to be carrying a bomb and asked to be allowed to leave. Democratic West Germany.
Details of the murder remained unknown for decades after the Stasi secret police shredded files related to the case before communist East Germany reunited with the West in 1991.
Berlin prosecutors filed charges against him in 2023 after persistent investigations by historians and Polish authorities.
On March 29, 1974, Kukuczka, a 38-year-old firefighter, walked into the Polish embassy on East Berlin’s Unter den Linden avenue with a briefcase.
The father of three said – falsely – that he was carrying a bomb. He requested permission to leave for West Berlin.
Stasi officers gave him an exit visa and some West German currency and escorted him to Friedrichstrasse station, which was still served by trains from the west of the city.
Kukuczka passed several border checks inside the station. However, before he could reach the western section 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 the witnesses to the murder. One person gave evidence at the trial that she saw a man shoot Kukuczka before “people in uniform” blocked the passage.
Details of the case were uncovered by historians, who tracked down relevant files in the Stasi archives. Documents linking Naumann to the murder were shredded and recovered using a specialized machine.
Kukuczka’s family was never officially informed of his fate. His ashes were sent to his wife a few weeks after he was murdered.
The case came to trial after Poland issued an arrest warrant for Naumann in Europe in 2021.
The trial is considered to have special historical significance in Germany, similar to the trial of surviving Holocaust perpetrators.
Martin Manfred N has always maintained his innocence. His lawyer said there was no evidence that he committed the murder.
East Germany was created from German territories occupied by the Soviet Union after the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945. It was a communist dictatorship, while West Germany – was created from occupied regions of the US, UK and France – is a capitalist, democratic state. .
In 1991, the two countries united to form modern Germany.
