Fifteen years after NSU was exposed, Germany still debates justice and institutional failure

Fifteen years after the National Socialist Underground was exposed, relatives of its victims remain without definitive answers about the neo-Nazi group’s crimes and the failures surrounding them, according to a retrospective by DW. The NSU murdered nine men from immigrant backgrounds between 2000 and 2006, according to the report. Its final known victim was Michèle Kiesewetter, a police officer killed in Heilbronn in April 2007.

Why Kiesewetter was targeted has never been conclusively established. The group’s existence became public on November 4, 2011, when Beate Zschäpe revealed the NSU after Uwe Böhnhardt and Uwe Mundlos were found dead in a burned-out recreational vehicle in Eisenach. The two men are believed to have died in a murder-suicide following a failed bank robbery, although DW says the circumstances have never been fully clarified.

A confession video sent to media outlets claimed responsibility for the killings of nine men on racist grounds. The group also carried out bombings, including a nail-bomb attack in Cologne. Yet neither the first NSU trial, held in Munich from 2013 to 2018, nor parliamentary inquiries answered all the questions raised by the case.

The latest legal proceedings have done little to ease the families’ frustration. Susann Eminger was sentenced in July by a Dresden court to two years on probation for supporting the terrorist group. She had helped Zschäpe use her identity documents and health insurance card, but the court did not find that she knew about the murders.

Michalina Boulgarides, whose father Theodoros was killed in Munich in 2005, questioned when victims would receive justice. DW reported that relatives and survivors of the Cologne bombing were also angered by Eminger’s suspended sentence and by the earlier sentence imposed on her husband, André, who served two-thirds of a two-and-a-half-year term. Ralf Wohlleben, convicted of aiding and abetting murder, completed a 10-year sentence in May.

Zschäpe is now the only person convicted in connection with the NSU who remains imprisoned and is expected to stay behind bars until 2035. The Federal Prosecutor’s Office has dropped its other investigations into suspected supporters. The debate has moved increasingly toward remembrance and education.

Germany plans a national NSU documentation centre in Nuremberg, where the group killed its first victim, Enver Şimşek, and carried out an early bombing. The project is expected to be completed by 2030, with nearly €9 million earmarked. A separate documentation centre has operated in Chemnitz since 2025, while plans for a memorial on Cologne’s Keupstraße continue.