A former officer in the East German secret police has been sentenced to 10 years in jail for the murder of a Polish firefighter at a Berlin border crossing 50 years ago.
Martin Naumann, now 80, shot Czesław Kukuczka in the back at close range on 29 March 1974 as Kukuczka walked towards the last in a series of control posts at a transit area in the divided city, having been told he had a free pass to escape to West Berlin.
The truth surrounding Kukuczka’s death was never revealed to his family. Instead, his cremated remains were sent in an urn to his wife, Emilia, weeks later, after which he was buried in a private ceremony by his family in southern Poland.
It took the dogged research skills of a historian immersed in the history of the Ministry for State Security (MfS), or the Stasi – which was the intelligence service and secret police of the communist GDR – to unearth the details of the case years later.
This raises so many more questions than it answers
Yeah, the Stasi were like “yeah, this guy threatened to blow up an embassy, let’s let him go and then shoot his ass for it”
I wish more German soldiers were punished for shooting Polish people [finger of the monkey’s paw curls]That’s… Great. But (sexual) child abuse still become time-barred after a measly 12yrs. Just around the corner where the victims are finally old enough to even do something about it.
But yeah, let’s focus on the important stuff like jailing some 80yrs old for doing his job 50yrs ago. Not saying it was good or just or anything.
I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that the statute of limitations for crimes against minors can be extended, because they were (obviously) minors when those crimes occurred, but I might be misremembering
Doesn’t Polish border patrol newly have the right to shoot at any illegal immigrants attempting to cross? See the crime isn’t shooting a human being, the crime for which many stasi members were sentenced was not being properly chauvinist.
