Friday 15, March
Ex-Stasi officer put on trial for deadly border shooting 50 years later
On March 29, 1974, a member of the East German secret police is said to have shot and killed a Polish man in the back while he was trying to flee to West Berlin at a border crossing at Friedrichstraße station. Almost 50 years later, on Thursday a trial began against the former Stasi officer at the Berlin district court, as reported by rbb.
The defendant, now aged 80, had been tasked with “rendering harmless” 38-year-old Czesław Kukuczka, whose identity only became known to investigators after German unification when Stasi documents and an autopsy report were released to the public.
Details around the Polish national’s death are now emerging. Apparently, Kukuczka is said to have threatened to detonate a bomb at the Polish embassy in East Berlin if not permitted to cross over to the Western territory.
According to the public prosecutor’s office, the accused former Stasi officer shot Kukuczka in the back from about two metres away while in the tunnels of the border crossing at Friedrichstraße station. Two students from Hesse, who were underage at the time and were returning home from a school trip in the capital, are now being called as witnesses in the case.
Two of Kukuczka’s children will appear as co-plaintiffs in the proceedings, and seven days of trial are planned until the end of May. According to judicial circles, new findings from the Stasi records will now play a major role in the case. And because the trial has historical significance, the process will be recorded and audio material will eventually be available at the state archives.
