Berlin, 14 October – The verdict in the case of the murder of Czesław Kukuczka (photo: IPN) was handed down by the Berlin Land Court (Landgericht) today. Ten years in prison for the 1974 murder of a Polish man who wanted to flee to the West.
The former East German State Security Ministry (STASI) officer Manfred N. was found guilty of the malicious murder of Kukuczka at the Friedrichstrasse railway border checkpoint between East and West Berlin.
Necessary evidence of his guilt had previously been collected by the IPN. In 2021 at the request of the prosecutor of the IPN’s Branch Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation in Poznań, the District Court in Poznań issued a European Arrest Warrant against Manfred N. The findings made during the investigation led by the IPN’s Branch Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation in Poznań indicated without a doubt that the GDR security service set a trap for Kukuczka assuming in advance that he would be prevented from leaving East Berlin even at the cost of his life. The perpetrator fired the fatal shot deceitfully, without warning, in the back of the victim, in a way that his death could be foreseen and in a situation in which the victim posed no threat.
On 29 March 1974 38-year-old Kukuczka showed up in Poland’s Embassy in East Berlin, where, pretending to be in possession of an explosive device and threatening to use it, he tried to obtain permission to enter West Berlin. A security service officer – a resident of Department I of Poland’s Ministry of Internal Affairs at the Embassy informed the STASI about the situation. The East German security service decided to “box the Polish citizen outside the Embassy when possible”.
To keep up the pretence, the STASI officers came to the Polish Embassy in East Berlin with documents necessary for Kukuczka to cross the border into West Berlin. After that, they left the Embassy along with him and drove towards the border crossing at the Friedrichstrasse railway station. As he was heading for the underground tunnel, an ununiformed STASI officer, Manfred N., fired into his back from a distance of approximately 2 meters. Severely wounded Pole was then taken to hospital, where he died of his injuries.
Kukuczka did not possess any explosive device. To give the appearance of legality to their actions, the East German authorities pretended that he had possessed a firearm, with which he had allegedly threatened the border guards.
Kukuczka wasn’t the only Polish victim of the Berlin Wall. In 1967 Franciszek Piesik drowned in a lake while trying to reach West Berlin. Since the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) was one of the most stable Eastern European dictatorships. German Communists owed the stability primarily to the omnipotent political police, the infamous STASI.
“The case of our Polish members confirms, that it is important to continue on the path we have started and to identify the crimes, the victims and their perpetrators even after many years. In this way, the IPN is fulfilling its mission and bringing justice to the victims of communist crimes.”, commented on today’s verdict Marek Mutor, president of the Platform.