How the net finally closed on the Nazi henchman Andrei Sawoniuk
Fedor Zan was 18, working on the river closing sluices, when, on a winter afternoon in 1942, he saw his childhood friend Andrei Sawoniuk standing in a clearing outside Domachevo, their town in Belarus. Sawoniuk had lined up 15 terrified women, all wearing the yellow Jewish star. As Zan watched, hidden behind the pine trees, Sawoniuk ordered the women to strip naked, shot them in the back and kicked their bodies into a newly dug pit. Fifty-seven years later, Zan was one of a dozen witnesses to give evidence against Sawoniuk at the Old Bailey, at the only war crimes trial ever held in Britain. Though the UK lost interest
