15th anniversary of the NSU terror series: How the NSU helpers got away

The former Zwickauer Ralf M. is said to have been at a concert in Tuggen, Switzerland, a small community on Lake Zurich, when a guest was beaten to death. The Saarland Oi band Krawallbrüder performed there and also attracted right-wing extremists. Blick reported that they were said to have provoked people with Hitler salutes. After being thrown out, they returned and provoked a fight. A 27-year-old Thuringian was then struck down with a punch by a neo-Nazi and died in hospital. Concert guest Ralf M. later wrote online: “It was a big party yesterday.”

The spicy thing: Ralf M. was once suspected of having been an helper of the National Socialist Underground (NSU). The former Saxon neo-Nazi great is said to have employed the underground NSU terrorist Uwe Mundlos in his former demolition company. Beate Zschäpe, in turn, is said to have appeared in his fashion store. At the time, the trio lived in hiding in Zwickau. At the same time, Ralf M. was also an undercover agent for the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, codename “Primus” – and the secret service claims to have known nothing about the Zwickau NSU hideout.

Investigators were ultimately unable to prove that Ralf M. had contacts with Mundlos and Zschäpe. The neo-Nazi left Zwickau in 2007, moved to Switzerland and now runs an antique shop - very close to the concert location where the deadly violence occurred. His visit there shows that Ralf M. has at least no fear of contact with the right-wing extremist scene to this day. When asked by taz by phone, the 54-year-old did not want to comment and hung up immediately.

The Ralf M. case is symptomatic: To date, many NSU helpers have escaped unpunished. After going underground in 1999, the terrorist group murdered nine migrant businessmen and a policewoman, carried out three attacks and 15 robberies. Until exactly 15 years ago, on November 4, 2011, members Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt shot themselves after a failed bank robbery and Beate Zschäpe exposed the group by sending out the confession DVDs.

Zschäpe was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2018, which she must serve until at least 2035 - and four helpers with her were sentenced to prison terms of up to ten years. Most recently, in July, only one NSU helper was sentenced, and that very mildly: Susann Eminger, Zschäpe's closest friend in the underground, to two years in prison on probation. She had provided Zschäpe with papers and alibis. Her husband André Eminger was one of the co-convicts in the Munich NSU trial and also received the lightest sentence there, two and a half years in prison.

Relatives of the victims were disappointed by the verdicts against the Emingers. Michalina Boulgarides, daughter of NSU murder victim Theodoros Boulgarides, spoke of a scandal after the verdict against Susann Eminger. This is tantamount to an acquittal, and again there is no justice for the victims. And Boulgarides is not the only one who is convinced that there were far more NSU helpers than those previously convicted.

The Federal Prosecutor's Office had originally investigated eight other NSU helpers. Ralf M. from Zwickau was not there, but right-wing extremists were there, who rented apartments to the trio, lent them papers or supplied them with weapons - some of which Zschäpe also admitted. All of these proceedings have now been discontinued. Only one structural case is still open at the Federal Prosecutor's Office if new information about the NSU emerges. However, only those involved in murders and attacks could be convicted - everything else is statute-barred.

And those convicted in Munich in 2018 are all released again. Ralf Wohlleben was the last to be released from prison this May, moved back to Saxony-Anhalt to a farm in the Burgenland district, and last appeared at a larger private celebration. Wohlleben had organized the weapon for nine of the murders for the NSU trio, a Ceska 83. During the trial he denied this and did not express a word of remorse. While still in prison, he refused to take part in drop-out programs that were offered. Today he has a condition of not having any contact with Zschäpe.

Wohlleben only recently made it clear that he remains loyal to the right-wing extremist scene. In one photo he posed with the right-wing rock singer Michael “Lunikoff” Regener and the Saxon neo-Nazi Benjamin Moses. He then gave an interview to the neo-Nazi magazine “NS Today”. There he claimed that there was no helper network around the NSU trio and emphasized that he had recently been involved “in the background” in “well-known projects” in the scene. And he thanked him for the “great support” of this scene. She collected donations and demonstrated for him while he was in prison. The right-wing extremist “Prison Aid” celebrated his release: Where others “failed” in prison, one could look at Wohlleben “with pride”.

The NSU helpers Susann and André Eminger currently live in a more withdrawn manner in the small Saxon town of Kirchberg. Susann Eminger lost her job as a geriatric nurse as a result of the trial. She claims that she no longer has anything to do with the right-wing extremist scene. André Eminger is now also a dropout, working as a crane driver and transporter. There were other times: During the Munich NSU trial, he was described by his lawyer as a “National Socialist through and through” or maintained contact with a right-wing terrorist from the III. Away – just like Ralf Wohlleben.

Gamze Kubaşık, whose father Mehmet Kubaşık was murdered by the NSU, criticizes the fact that the network of helpers surrounding the NSU has not yet been uncovered and prosecuted. “The terror has destroyed our families and the murderers’ helpers are walking around out there unmolested – it’s unbearable.” Even 15 years after the NSU was exposed, the families are demanding the full truth about the terror, said Kubaşık. And real consequences, which have also been missing to this day. “We will not be satisfied with half-clarification.”