22 July 2014

„We have hardly ever met such nice people, we thought they would not hurt a fly…”

After Zschäpe’s request for new counsel was rejected, the court heard two young women who spent their family summer vacations in the years 2007 to 2011 at the Baltic Sea with Beate Zschäpe, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt. Both witnesses stated that all three had been very nice, friendly and helpful to them. The families and their “Ossis” (a colloquial term for people from the former German Democratic Republic) had turned into an ever closer vacation community, there had also been visits between the summers, Zschäpe, Mundlos and Böhnhardt had visited and brought little presents.

“Lieschen” Zschäpe had played a particularly important role for the two young women as she had been easier to talk to about personal topics than their parents. This had been the case despite one of the two having a decidedly anti-fascist worldview which was also visible via “Antifascist Action”-patches on her bag. Both women were clearly heartbroken and devastated to realize that the three persons they had held so dear had committed such horrible crimes. One of them put her anger into the following words: “I still cannot understand this. I trusted them 100 percent, and now I have realized that they have done nothing but lie to me. I have asked myself whether they even really liked me or whether that was just as fake.”

What this testimony showed was not only that „the Three“ had, over the years, built a perfect disguise, but also that they had a need for personal contact to “normal people”. What is most interesting, however, is that the “völkisch” and racist ideology behind the NSU murders still allowed them to have close relationships to other “German people”, even those who were opposed to Nazis. In the midst of the “Volksgemeinschaft”, they behaved decently and friendly, their murderous anger and hatred were motivated by racist thought. In other words, the NSU did not consist of psycho murderers who had gone off the rails, but of clearly politically motivated Nazis.