The child of a grandmother behind the neo-Nazi terror

The two serial killers with whom she lived for thirteen years are long dead. This is the reason why only Beate Zschäpe has been prosecuted for five years for the series of murders, attacks and racist raids that his small right-wing extremist group Nationalsozialistischer Untergrund (NSU) committed between 1999 and 2011 in several German cities

. The series of murders is central to the process – one of the largest criminal cases of post-war Germany. Is she a dominant personality, who has had both men in her clutches and played a key role in their terrorist acts? Or is she, as she says herself, intimidated by them and kept out of all the horrible crimes?

On Wednesday, the Munich court announces its verdict. Four men also finished in various forms of help to all three. They also hear their verdict.

Zschäpe has been in the far right circles for years before hiding in 1998 with Uwe Mundlos (1973-2011) and Uwe Böhnhardt (1977-2011). First Mundlos is her friend, but if she has to do her military service, she will have a relationship with Böhnhardt. The three, raised in a flat area of ​​East German Jena, remain friends.

The Mother with Alcohol

The radicalization of Zschäpes begins when she is a teenager. She has never known her father. His mother, who studied in Romania and later became unemployed and had a drink, leaves education to his own mother. "I am the child of a grandmother," says Zschäpe during an interrogation. She finds something like a family through the two-year-old Mundlos skinhead among neo-Nazi youth at a community center.

They commit robberies, attempt to imitate the Ku Klux Klan with a cross on fire, hang a doll with the inscription "Jew" on a viaduct, participate in demonstrations of the far right , experiment explosives and raids (sometimes with violence) Vietnamese – many other people of foreign origin are not yet in the east of Germany. Earlier this year, NRC was interviewed with the son of the first fatal victim of the NSU: "Racism has not taken the perpetrators before"

There is a void of authority for many young people. The wall fell, the GDR fell. Police, teachers and often parents lose their authority, companies go bankrupt, there is massive unemployment. Zschäpe is not admitted to the teacher training of children's garden, learns for gardener but can not find work.

Since the trio is dangerous, the authorities see when they are looking in 1998 for a garage rented by Zschäpe. Explosives are found, a list of civilian car registration plates used by police and far right propaganda. Among them, the hand-made board game Pogromly an anti-Semitic variation of Monopoly illustrated with swastikas and with street stations and four concentration camps, cities must be "jüdenfrei" [19659005] & # 39; The ordinary woman "

The three decisions to hide after the invasion – first with friends of their neo-Nazi network, later, under false names, in their own homes. The neighbors' stories give the impression that Zschäpe manages to keep the appearance that she is an ordinary woman living with her boyfriend and her brother.

Meanwhile, the two Uwes between 2000 and 2007 in ten cities carry out ten carefully prepared murders and two attacks involving more than twenty wounded. In nine cases, the deaths had a migration background (most of them Turkish). The last victim was a policewoman.

A security camera recorded a bank robbery on September 7, 2011. The men were unmasked as Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt . Foto Reuters

As far as we know, Zschäpe is in no way at the scene of the crime. But she manages money, makes fake papers and cell phones. Without his participation, according to the prosecution, the murders would not have been possible.

Zschäpe says that she only hears after every murder until she is appalled by both Uwes of what they did. When she told the police that they would have threatened to kill each other.

"Then I would have death on my conscience from the only two people, next to my grandmother, who were dear to me," she explains. The trio is alive by raiding banks and supermarkets.

House on Fire

For years, the media and authorities have dismissed the murders as family feuds or settlements in the criminal (Turkish) environment. They were called "Doner killings".

The fact that a racist terrorist was active, as soon know the relatives, the police and justice recognize only in 2011: November 4, the bodies of the Uwes end up in a camper , probably one shot on the other and committed suicide. On that day Zschäpe sets fire to their house. Four days later, she announced that she had sent DVDs on which the NSU claimed the murders to various media outlets.

The 437-day session, including the dramatic testimonies of parents, she lived almost insensitive. On the last day of the hearing, she denies being an accomplice again, but she apologizes for the suffering she has caused, probably referring to the fact that she was not did not go to the police before 2011.

In 2016, she separated from the "nationalists" thinking. "But the information on possible aids, on the circumstances of the killings and the selection of the victims, for which the survivors urged him, did not give them all these years.