MUNICH, Germany - The surviving member of a neo-Nazi cell went on trial on Monday for a series of racist murders that scandalized Germany and exposed authorities' inability or reluctance to recognize right-wing hate crime.

The chance discovery of the gang, the National Socialist Underground (NSU), which had gone undetected for more than a decade, has forced Germany to acknowledge it has a more militant and dangerous neo-Nazi fringe than previously thought.

Beate Zschaepe, 38, is charged with complicity in the murder of eight Turks, a Greek and a German policewoman between 2000 and 2007, as well as two bombings in immigrant areas of Cologne and 15 bank robberies.

"With its historical, social and political dimensions, the NSU trial is one of the most significant of post-war German history," lawyers for the family of the first victim, flower seller Enver Simsek, said in a statement.

The case has shaken a country that believed it had learned the lessons of the past, and reopened a debate about whether it must do more to tackle the far-right and lingering racism.

Zschaepe, wearing a black jacket and white shirt, chatted with her lawyers before the judges entered, her back turned to the television cameras. One of four other defendants charged with assisting the NSU hid under a dark hood.

Stephan Jansen / EPA

A Turkish woman who tried forcibly to enter the court building where Beate Zschaepe is being tried is arrested by police in Munich, Germany, on Monday.

Outside the courthouse, German-Turkish community groups and anti-racism demonstrators held up banners including one that read: "Hitler child Zschaepe, you will pay for your crimes".

About 500 police officers provided tight security. Members of the public and media, who lined up before dawn for a chance to attend, even had their hair searched before being allowed in.

The existence of the gang came to light in November 2011 when the two men believed to have founded the NSU with Zschaepe, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Boehnhardt, committed suicide after a botched bank robbery and set their caravan ablaze.

Christof Stache / AFP - Getty Images

Beate Zschaepe who is charged with complicity in the murders of eight ethnic Turks, a Greek immigrant and a German policewoman between 2000 and 2007, enters a courtroom in Munich, Germany, on Monday.

In the charred vehicle, police found the gun used in all 10 murders and a grotesque DVD claiming responsibility for them, in which the bodies of the victims were pictured with a cartoon Pink Panther totting up the number of dead.

After the suicides, Zschaepe is believed to have set fire to a flat she shared with the men in Zwickau, in east Germany. Four days later, she turned herself in to police in her hometown of Jena, saying: "I'm the one you're looking for."

For the victims' families, the trial will be the first chance to come face-to-face with Zschaepe, whose blank expression and resolute silence since her arrest have left people struggling to make sense of her motives.

"The Banality of Evil" read the front page of the newspaper Die Welt. The mass-circulation Bild wrote that Zschaepe "looks like a woman at the supermarket till" rather than someone "rabidly mad or explosive".

Few expect Zschaepe to explain herself at the trial. The Norwegian anti-immigrant mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in 2011, wrote to Zschaepe last year addressing her as "Dear Sister" and urging her to use the trial to spread far-right ideology.

Reuters

Beate Zschaepe, right, is seen with Uwe Boehnhardt of the neo-Nazi group National Socialist Underground in this undated handout picture provided by the German Federal Police.

Hearings are scheduled into early 2014, with Zschaepe's estranged relatives and the parents of Mundlos and Boehnhardt due to testify.

As teenagers in Jena, the trio were known to authorities to be involved in racist hate crimes and bomb making, but they escaped arrest and assumed new identities.

Prosecutors say they hose shopkeepers and small business owners as easy targets to try to hound immigrants out of Germany. Some of the victims' relatives came under suspicion because police simply did not consider a far-right motive.

"During the investigations they were either treated as suspects, or as relatives of criminals," said lawyer Angelika Lex.

Parliament is conducting an inquiry into how police and intelligence agencies failed to link the murders or share information about the far-right threat.

Related:

• 'Nazi Bride' case highlights rising influence of women in far-right movement
• A retired teacher's courageous campaign: Tackling neo-Nazi hate

This story was originally published on Sun May 5, 2013 10:35 PM EDT

German Police via Reuters

Beate Zschaepe, 38, is accused of complicity in the murder of eight ethnic Turks, a Greek and a policewoman, two bombings and 15 bank robberies. She has been described as "Germany's most dangerous neo-Nazi."

MAINZ, Germany -- Dubbed the "Nazi Bride," Beate Zschaepe has become the face of right-wing militancy in Germany.

The 38-year-old woman is allegedly the sole surviving member of the National Socialist Underground, a neo-Nazi terror cell accused of a seven-year racist killing spree.

On Monday, Zschaepe will go on trial accused of complicity in the murder of eight ethnic Turks, a Greek and a policewoman, two bombings and 15 bank robberies. 

But she is alleged to be far more than just the tagalong lover of the far-right gang's leader. 

German federal prosecutor Wolfgang Range alleges that Zschaepe gave the terror cell "the appearance of legality and normalcy towards the outside."

German Police via Reuters

National Socialist Underground member Uwe Boehnhardt was found dead after a bungled armed robbery in November 2011.

Speaking to Der Spiegel magazine, Range added: "I am convinced that she wasn't just an accessory or merely a companion, but was in fact acting on the same level as the others." 

Zschaepe and two alleged accomplices, who took their own lives, have been described by Range as a "unified killing commando" responsible for a series of execution-style murders.

Zschaepe's case will spotlight the increasingly prominent role that women are playing in the neo-Nazi scene. In particular, they have been gaining influence in German far-right politics.

Statistics suggest nearly 20 percent of executives in Germany's extremist NPD party are women, which is a higher percentage than in many smaller mainstream parties.

"Women are increasingly taking center stage in the far-right scene," said Michaela Koettig, a professor for social work at the University of Applied Sciences in Frankfurt. "They are filling important positions after being fully socialized by the scene."

Up to 40 far-right women's organizations alone have been established since 2000, according to Koettig.

"Like their male comrades, women from the extreme right are also violent and fully politically motivated in their actions," said Koettig, who has been conducting research on far-right extremism for the past 20 years. 

Overall, the German government's domestic intelligence agency estimates that there are more than 22,000 active members in the country's right-wing scene, including 9,800 violent extremists. Statistics on the exact number of female supporters do not exist.

Zschaepe, who has been branded "Germany's most dangerous neo-Nazi," has so far kept silent. Prosecutors hope that she will testify during her trial, which could run for more than a year in Munich.

If found guilty, Zschaepe faces life in prison.

Zschaepe's alleged accomplices, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Boenhardt, were found dead following a bungled armed robbery in November 2011.  Zschaepe turned herself in to police three days later.

The German intelligence community came under fire for failing to detect the group and was accused of being blind on the "right eye," suggesting that the agencies had dedicated too much of their attention to left-wing extremism and Islamists instead.

German Police via Reuters

Uwe Mundlos was the third member of the National Socialist Underground, according to German authorities.

Investigators had focused on the victims’ potential links to the local crime scene and to foreign criminal organizations, while neglecting a possible far-right motive in the killings, which occurred between 2000 and 2007.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has publicly apologized to the families of the murder victims.

German officials now warn that right-wing extremists are trying to conceal their true identities in order to gain a foothold in German society.

In its annual report, the Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution, an intelligence agency in this southern German state, highlighted that neo-Nazi groups are disguising their organizations to recruit new members and spread right-wing ideology.

"We do not see a widespread infiltration into civil society yet, but right-wing groups and the far-right NPD party are investing a lot of time and money to mask their ideology, to set up a facade," said Markus Schaefert, spokesman for the Bavarian intelligence service.

In the city of Fuerth, neo-Nazis this year launched a so-called "citizens' initiative" called "Soziales Fuerth" -- or "social Fuerth" -- which is aimed at creating the image of an organization that cares for the needs and concerns of local residents.

The website prominently displays the face of a young blond-haired child with blue eyes. Its logo features the slogan "out of love for the people and the homeland."

According to the latest intelligence report, these new so-called "social initiatives" are following "the strategy to draw attention to issues on the level of local politics and to present themselves as an electable alternative."

Such groups are turning to social media and sites such as Facebook to mask their ideologies. 

But even more worrying are the groups' strategies to influence young people as early as possible, experts say.

"As there is mounting political and social pressure towards the neo-Nazi scene and the right-wing NPD party, the extremists, who themselves are often parents with young children, are trying to ingrain [themselves] in society," said Winfriede Scheiber, head of the intelligence service in the eastern German state of Brandenburg.

Experts say that neo-Nazis are using community facilities to reach adolescents and young children, seeking to influence their thinking at an early stage in life, or to even recruit them.

"We are worried about the development that moms and dads with right-wing ideologies are increasingly taking up duties in kindergartens, nursing homes or sports clubs," Schreiber added.

Koettig, the social work professor, said such extremists "stay inconspicuous at first and then, once they play a leading role in sports clubs or have become members of their school's parents' association, gradually introduce their ideology."

Reuters contributed to this report.

Related links:

• A retired teacher's courageous campaign: Tackling neo-Nazi hate
• Full Germany coverage from NBC News

Alex Grimm / Bongarts via Getty Images

Fans of the German soccer team Kaiserslautern hold up Israeli flags to protest against anti-Semitism prior to the Bundesliga match between FC Kaiserslautern and VfL Wolfsburg in March last year.

Nearly seven decades after the Holocaust, young soccer fans in Germany have become targets of neo-Nazis who preach the hatred of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich.

“Again and again we see neo-Nazi presence in [sports] fan clubs and my office asks that action be taken against them,” said Winfriede Schreiber, head of the Brandenburg branch of the German government’s intelligence service. “For example, we see the fan club in [the German city] Cottbus consisting of a lot of neo-Nazis. We asked the football club to do something about this.”

At her office in Brandenburg, a state in eastern Germany, Schreiber monitors extremism and reports evidence of hate crimes to prosecutors.

“The neo-Nazis now look like everyone else,” Schreiber said. “Gone are the jackboots and black leather jackets that used to make it easy to expose them. Now they blend into the local population.”

According to Schreiber, the neo-Nazis subscribe to Hitler’s views and extol his one-time deputy, Rudolf Hess.

“The danger the neo-Nazis pose is that they are against democracy and they work to alienate young people from democracy,” she said. “They have made ‘Juden’ [Jews] a curse word even if there are no Jews playing on the soccer field.”

Jens Teschke, a spokesman for Germany's interior ministry, which is responsible for domestic security, said neo-Nazi activities are visible throughout Germany, but strongest in the country's east.

“Neo-Nazis take young soccer fans to homes built in the Nazi times as holiday retreats for elite members of Hitler’s party,” Teschke said. “They laud the Nazi era and the legacy of this era.”

According to Teschke, the German government launched programs in January 2011 to make soccer coaches more aware of neo-Nazi tactics.

The problem is not limited to Germany. 

In England, fans of London-based Tottenham Hotspur -- which boasts a strong Jewish following -- have been subjected to anti-Semitic abuse for many years. In November, supporters of West Ham United "hissed on several occasions, mocking the mass execution of Jews during the Second World War," the U.K.'s Telegraph newspaper reported. "While the hissing, shamefully, is nothing new, Tottenham fans were also subjected to a chant of 'Adolf Hitler, he's coming for you.'"

Only days earlier, an American college student suffered a foot-long stab wound and a punctured lung when a mob of up to 50 masked men armed with knives and baseball bats attacked Tottenham Hotspur fans before a Europa League match in Rome.

Witnesses told local media that the attackers shouted "Jews, Jews" as they laid siege to the bar. 

"The coordinated attack ... appears to have been motivated at least in part by anti-Semitism," the Telegraph reported.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center also recently highlighted the issue's growth. "The problem of anti-Semitic abuse at soccer matches which until recently has been limited to Eastern Europe, has been revived in Western Europe," it said in a report.

Prime targets of anti-Semitism on the soccer field are the Makkabi teams, Jewish athletic clubs located in 15 German cities.

“Every Makkabi team in Germany is confronted with anti-Semitism, as are teams with Jewish roots,” said Deidre Berger, director of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) in Berlin, an advocacy group.

Soccer coach Claudio Oppenberg, who is Jewish, said his team also faced anti-Semitism from Muslim immigrants.

According to Oppenberg, who’s coached Tus Makkabi Berlin for seven years, only two members of the current team are Jewish. The rest are from North Africa and Turkey.

During a game last March, Oppenberg said members of a Turkish team shouted at fellow Turks on the Makkabi team: “How can you play for these damned Jews?”

The Turkish team beat the Makkabis 1-0. Oppenberg said the Turkish coach confronted him after the game and said: “We f---d you Jews.” 

Oppenberg filed charges with the German Football Federation and the Turkish coach was suspended for a year.

“If you have racism and anti-Semitism in society, then you will have it in football too,” said Alex Feuerherdt, a soccer referee and freelance writer.

Donald Snyder, a veteran NBC News producer for more than 25 years, is a special correspondent for NBCNews.com. 

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