In December 1972 , Meinhof , who was awaiting trial , was called to testify at Horst Mahler 's trial where Mahler questioned her about the statement of support the two had issued for the September 1972 massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics . His questioning led her to say : How was Auschwitz possible , what was anti-Semitism ? It used the hatred of the people of their dependence on money as a medium of exchange , their longing for communism . Auschwitz means that six million Jews were murdered and carted on to the rubbish dumps of Europe for being that which was maintained of them – Money-Jews . What had happened was that finance capital and banks , the hard core of the system of imperialism and capitalism , had diverted the people 's hatred of money and exploitation away from themselves and on to the Jews . After two years of preliminary hearings , Meinhof was sentenced to eight years ' imprisonment on 29 November 1974 . Eventually Meinhof , Baader , Ensslin , and Raspe were jointly charged on 19 August 1975 , with four counts of murder , fifty-four of attempted murder , and a single count of forming a criminal association . However , before the trial was concluded , Meinhof was found hanged by a rope , fashioned from a towel , in her cell in the Stammheim Prison on 9 May 1976 . It is highly probable that , if not for her death , she would have been sentenced to ' life imprisonment plus 15 years ' . ( The remaining three defendants received such a sentence , designed to minimize the possibility of early parole . ) The official verdict was Meinhof had committed suicide . It was later discovered she had become increasingly isolated from other RAF prisoners . Notes exchanged between them in prison included one by Gudrun Ensslin , describing her as " too weak " . The official findings were not accepted by many in the RAF and other militant organisations , and there are still some who doubt their accuracy and believe that she was murdered by the authorities , rather than her RAF comrades . A second investigation was carried out by an international group . The findings of the inquiry were published under the title '' Der Tod Ulrike Meinhofs . Bericht der Internationalen Untersuchungskommission '' ( '' The Death of Ulrike Meinhof . Report of the International Investigation Committee '' ) in 1979
massacre
Munich massacre
Ulrike Meinhof