It’s a strange season to talk about forgiveness. While streets glow with fairy lights and shop windows promise that compassion is only a gift-box away, Germany is once again confronted with the unresolved wounds of its recent past. The trap of the season is this: believing that every gesture of regret must be met with mercy. As if forgiveness was a resource available to anyone who is reasonable enough to move on, no matter how atrociously they have been treated.

It is certainly not that simple for the families of the victims of the National Socialist Underground (NSU). During the 2000s, the neo-Nazi terror organisation killed 10 people, nine of them immigrants, mostly small business owners, and one policewoman. Because investigators focused on probing the victims’ families and communities rather than on Nazis, the NSU was able to continue murdering without interference. German media reported on the atrocities as die Dönermorde the kebab murders, as if it was some exotic true-crime phenomenon.

In 2011, when the NSU outed itself in a video in which it claimed responsibility for the murders and several nailbomb attacks, it also exposed profound structural failures in the German state’s approach to rightwing terrorism.

Subsequent inquiries revealed that security agencies had informants in close proximity to the perpetrators, overlooked relevant intelligence, and in some cases destroyed files after the group was uncovered. As a result, the NSU case has come to be understood not only as a sequence of racist murders but as an indictment of the state’s inability – or unwillingness – to adequately recognise and confront far-right violence.

Now, in ongoing proceedings surrounding the NSU, Beate Zschäpe – sentenced to life in 2018 for her role within the NSU core cell responsible for 10 murders – recently appeared in court as a witness in a related trial. But this time, Zschäpe took on a markedly different tone than she had before – one of remorse, or at least something that resembled it. She spoke of shame, of reconsideration, of recognition of her own guilt, which she claims only started during her own trial, ending in 2018.

Back then, Zschäpe denied any involvement in the murders, and her cooperation with authorities was extremely limited. A full investigation of the murders would only have been possible with Zschäpe’s truthful testimony, since her two co-members, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Börnhardt, had killed themselves in 2011 to evade arrest.

Zschäpe had gone into hiding with the two men and had lived with them under false identities in various German cities for more than a decade. In court, she stayed silent for years. Then, in written testimony running to 53 pages, she managed to not answer any of the 300 questions asked by the victims’ relatives, who appeared in court as co-plaintiffs. Instead, Zschäpe claimed never to have been informed in advance about the murders and bomb attacks committed by her two partners, saying she had found out about them only afterwards.

Now, the 50-year-old Zschäpe has appeared in court and spoken of how “ashamed” she is. Inevitably, one has to wonder whether this shift is really a moral transformation or a more pragmatic pivot made in the hope of improving her situation in prison. Last summer, she was admitted to a neo-Nazi exit programme, prompting alarm among the victims’ relatives, since this could increase the chances of her early release. In 2026, Zschäpe will have served 15 years in prison, which is the minimum for a life sentence. Because of the gravity of the crimes, she will not be released next year, but the court must set a so-called minimum for her remaining term of imprisonment. Her participation in the exit programme and her public display of contrition may have an impact on the court’s decision.

“There is no excuse for the murders. I will never be able to make it right,” Zschäpe said in court earlier this month. Gamze Kubasik, whose father Mehmet Kubasik was shot in the head by the NSU in 2006 in his own kiosk, was also in court that day and shouted: “Then tell us the truth!” Zschäpe responded with a silent look at Kubasik.

And this silence gives more answers than all the vague words of remorse and guilt Zschäpe is now using in court. For the performance of remorse has a tradition in Germany. It fits a country that has confronted its crimes historically – or at least likes to tell itself that story. As a nation it has learned that a good mix of contrition and silence can pave the way back to social acceptance. The desire for atonement is not inherently wrong. But it becomes problematic when it is treated as a shortcut: when forgiveness is expected, although no believable effort has been made to earn it.

If Zschäpe’s efforts to distance herself from the neo-Nazi ideology were sincere, she would have helped to clarify the circumstances of the murders. She can still share information, which many families are begging for, in order to understand what happened to their loved ones. But Zschäpe chooses silence. She doesn’t show by her actions that she has become a different person, she just tries to sound like one. And maybe that’s the thing with forgiveness: you don’t have to forgive somebody just because they ask for it – they have to earn it as well.

• Fatma Aydemir is a Berlin-based author, novelist, playwright and a Guardian Europe columnist