Trial by history: Nazi war criminals and the law

In 1991, after much pressure, debate and media attention, the War Crimes Act came into being. This particular piece of legislation had been either supported or opposed by a great number of people and organisations, and was therefore an important landmark in the field of war crimes law and historical crimes.

This act was established to prosecute those who had committed war crimes, under specific conditions. The law sought to prosecute those who has committed Second World War era war crimes, in a foreign country, retrospectively, with evidence gathered from abroad. Without these conditions, it would make it problematic to enforce this law.

One difficulty with using evidence from history is that legal thresholds and historical narratives can operate very differently, and historians do not need to consider the same legal thresholds. David Hirsh has discussed this in his work in how Holocaust testimony holds up under cross-examination in court. Hirsh detailed the only Second World War era Nazi war criminal to be prosecuted under this law, Andrei Sawoniuk, who was part of a police unit that operated in Belarus in 1942-43.

In Sawoniuk’s trial, he was accused of four counts of murder, under the specific conditions of the War Crimes Act. Two of these were laid before the jury. It may seem inconceivable to those who understand or take an interest in the Nazis and their crimes, that there could only be two specimen counts of murder and not crimes against humanity or war crimes. In 1987, another Nazi war criminal, Klaus Barbie, was convicted of offences in France, namely for the deportation of children to Auschwitz and Ravensbrück. At this trial there were eyewitness survivors who testified against him, and this type of evidence was needed in the Sawoniuk trial too.

The difficulty in raising witnesses for these crimes in Sawoniuk’s case was that most were dead, having been murdered in Belarus. Additionally, other witnesses were very elderly and so recounting narratives long after the crimes were committed meant that their accuracy was called into question. Sawoniuk’s barrister raised the issue that there was a great deal of support for a trial and prosecution from those overseas wanting to secure conviction, so then, how could this be a fair and unbiased trial. This cast doubt as to whether the witnesses were able to say with certainty that Sawoniuk shot anyone, and whether the jury could be satisfied that he was party to the killing, according to Mike Anderson and Niel Hanson. Sawoniuk was eventually convicted in 1999 and sentenced to life in prison.

In sum, and as only one Nazi war criminal has been prosecuted under this law, the future remains uncertain. However, this law does stand and can be used for all potential conflicts and hidden war criminals living in the UK. War crimes are becoming easier to investigate and more difficult to hide from, due to technological progress, according to Chris Stephen. Therefore, we may see more prosecutions in the future.

Siobhán Hyland

Dr Siobhán Hyland is an early career researcher and former University of Northampton PhD student. Her work focuses on the history of antifascism, and the prosecution of war crimes.