LONDON -- A Belarusian man was convicted of killing two Jewish women in 1942 and sentenced to life in prison Thursday in Britain's first war crimes prosecution.
Anthony Sawoniuk, 78, had denied killing the women while he was serving in the local police in his hometown of Domachevo, Belarus, during the German occupation.Sawoniuk, a retired British Rail employee, was convicted of killing a woman who was among at least 15 people mowed down with a submachine gun as they stood naked by a pit in Domachevo.
The jury also found him guilty of shooting an unidentified woman, one of three Jews who were shot in the backs of their heads and pushed into an open grave in December 1942.
In imposing sentence at the Old Bailey, Judge Humphrey Potts told Sawoniuk, "No words of mine can add anything of value to those words already written and spoken about the events in which you played a part.
"I only say this -- that although you held a lowly rank in the hierarchy of those involved in the liquidation of Jews in eastern Europe, to the Jews of Domachevo, it must have seemed otherwise."
During the course of the trial, Potts dismissed two other murder counts facing Sawoniuk.
"I have done no crime whatsoever," Sawoniuk told jurors during his testimony. "My conscience is clear. I would not dream of doing it."
But Alexander Baglay, 67, testified that he saw Sawoniuk kill the second woman. Baglay, who was 12 at the time, said she had resisted Sawoniuk's order to the group to undress.
"When she refused, he threatened her with a truncheon. When she had undressed, they were lined up and shot. He shot them with his pistol in the back of the head," Baglay testified.
An estimated 200,000 Jews were killed in Nazi-occupied Belarus during the war.