After almost 80 days of negotiations, the Hamburg trial against steakhouse heiress Christina Block is entering its final phase. The 53-year-old is accused of having commissioned an Israeli security company to kidnap her two children from Denmark to Germany.
For the first time, Block's youngest daughter Klara publicly describes how New Year's Eve 2023/24 went from the children's perspective in a podcast “House of Block”. Her father and his partner also have their say. So far, Klara had only described to the court behind closed doors how she experienced the night of the crime.
"I wanted to tell you what happened to me and my family on New Year's Eve. How should I start?" says Klara in the first episode of the kidnapping case on "Zeit Crime". She was 13 years old then, now she is 16.
According to Klara's description, the family sets off to the harbor of a small Danish town shortly before midnight to watch the fireworks. At the time she was living with her brother with their father Stephan Hensel and his partner Astrid Have in Denmark. Even then, there were security concerns that the birth mother could forcibly return the children. The dispute over the youngest of their four children between Hensel and the millionaire heiress had escalated because Klara and her then ten-year-old brother Theo did not return to their mother as agreed. "And then she saw red. And I didn't want to let up," explains Hensel.
At the time, the family lived in a place called Grasten, directly behind the German-Danish border. Hensel's Danish partner reports in the podcast about cameras that were discovered in the garden; by unknown men who were standing in front of the house and watching the family. Suspicious people also appeared at the school. The police take the family's information so seriously that the children are given emergency buttons - devices that, when activated, not only alert the emergency services, but also use a microphone to record everything that can be heard in the area. The children always have this protection with them - even on New Year's Eve.
Shortly before midnight, the adults give in to the children's wish to watch the fireworks outside at the harbor. "I didn't want to be the paranoid one. And then we said: OK, it's just before twelve o'clock. Let's go to the harbor again," says Hensel. And Astrid Have also explains: “You can’t say to the children: ‘No, you can’t go out because you can be kidnapped.’”
But the fireworks are too loud for Astrid Have's little daughter. She gets scared, so mother and child go back into the house, which is only about 140 meters from the harbor. Klara, her brother Theo and her father Stephan Hensel are left alone on a terrace by the water. Suddenly, Hensel remembers, he turned around and saw a “completely masked person” in front of him. “Then I was already lying on the floor,” he describes. "I also tried to turn around, i.e. turn onto my back again, in order to get into the attack position. Accordingly, I was hit in the face again with my fist. I was kicked in the abdomen, several times. And also in the body."
Klara also remembers the moment when the men appeared: First she heard her father's screams. "He's never screamed louder than he's ever screamed before. So, it was terrible, terrible," she says. Her brother, then ten-year-old Theo, also screamed. “I just thought: I want to leave, I want to leave.” Nevertheless, she stayed – because of her brother. “I thought I couldn’t leave him alone.” She already suspected why the men had come. "I saw my dad lying on the ground with men standing over him. And Theo, who was being dragged into this car."
One of the men eventually pushed her to the ground and pressed his hand over her mouth. “And that smell, that’s a really typical glove smell,” Klara remembers. She screamed – in German, Danish and English. Finally, two men grabbed her by the head and legs and carried her to a vehicle. "I couldn't do anything. I couldn't punch anymore, I couldn't kick anymore," she remembers.
According to their descriptions, the two siblings lay on top of each other in the footwell of a car while driving. An older man was sitting in the back with them. "I pinched myself, I closed my eyes. I thought that wouldn't happen," says Klara. But then she realizes: “We’re driving and we’re driving really fast.”
While driving, Theo presses the alarm button a total of nine times. He was lying under her and complained of shortness of breath, so she tried to move, Klara remembers. But the kidnapper instructed her in English: “Be quiet now.”
According to Klara, her thoughts during this time revolve primarily around her father. She feared that the perpetrators had killed him with a knife. “I was really so afraid that he was dead,” she says. When the children found out that they were to be taken to their mother, they apparently reacted differently than the kidnappers had expected. They can be heard protesting on the emergency button recordings. “No!”
It is not known when the trial against Christina Block will end. The entrepreneur faces ten years in prison and denies the allegations. The presumption of innocence applies. The father in Denmark now has full custody of the two children. An expert stated in a report that the children had been exposed to “massive trauma” as a result of the events. And the consequences would continue to this day.
