Draft:Szymon Serafinowicz
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Szymon Serafinowicz (19 Dec 1910 - 1997) was the first person to be prosecuted under the War Crimes Act 1991 in the United Kingdom. During World War II he was a commander in the Belarusian Auxiliary Police under Nazi occupation.[1]
Serafinowicz, who was a carpenter by trade, was granted refugee status when the War ended and migrated to the UK with his Polish wife Jadwega Juszkiewicz, who died in 1993. British authorities initially investigated Serafinowicz in 1947 and found that he had entered the United Kingdom illegally by falsely stating that he had been a member of the Polish army during the war, but no action was taken against him[2].
In 1995 Serafinowicz was arrested and charged with four counts of murder in respect of Jews in Belarus in 1941/2[3]. Two of the charges related to alleged murders that occurred in the town of Turets on 27th October and 4th November 1941. The other charges related to the alleged killing of a Jew on 9th November 1941 in the town of Mir (where about 3,000 Jews were held in the Mir Ghetto), and another alleged murder some time between December 1941 and March 1942 in the village of Kryniczne[4], 15 kilometers north of Mir. During the committal hearing that followed, sixteen witnesses testified that Serafinowicz played a role in the extermination of more than 3,000-Jews in and around Minsk, the capital of Belarus.[5] According to historian Eugeniusz Mironowicz, Serafinowicz and his associates murdered families that they had lived and worked with for years [6]
The case against Serafinowicz was withdrawn when a jury at the Old Bailey formed the view that he was unfit to be tried[7] because of reduced competence resulting from dementia.[8] The outcome subsequently raised questions around the efficacy of criteria used to determine a person's mental competence[9], as well as the validity of the actual legislation used to prosecute Serafinowicz[10]. Serafinowicz died soon after the trial ended, in 1997 at the age of 86[11], and is buried at All Saints Church, Banstead, Surrey, England.
References
[edit]- ^ Safe Haven: The United Kingdom’s Investigations into Nazi Collaborators and the Failure of Justice. Jon Silverman and Robert Sherwood, Oxford University Press, 2023.
- ^ Howard, Harry. The Devils next door... The Daily Mail, 6 April 2024. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13266903/Nazi-war-criminals-UK-live-decades.html.
- ^ Report of the Secretary-General, United Nations General Assembly. The scope and application of the principle of universal jurisdiction A/66/93 20 June 2011. https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/n11/380/74/pdf/n1138074.pdf?OpenElement
- ^ Britain charges man with war crimes. UPI 13 July 1995. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1995/07/13/Britain-charges-man-with-war-crimes/2910805608000/
- ^ Mirror.co.uk 23rd October 2007. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/i-was-devastated-my-grandad-was-branded-a-nazi-515481.
- ^ Mironowicz, Eugeniusz. Ukraińcy, Rosjanie and Żydzi na Białorusi i w okresie okupacji iemieckiej Беларускі гістарычны зборнік 42. Беларускае гістарычнае таварыства 42, Białystok, Poland 2014.
- ^ Robinson, Alan (June 1999). "War Crimes, Old Soldiers and Fading Memories: The Serafinowicz Case". The Journal of Holocaust Education. 8 (1): 42–57. doi:10.1080/17504902.1999.11087085.
- ^ War Crimes Case Abandoned: FINAL Edition. (1997). The Washington Post.
- ^ Freckelton, Ian; Karagiannakis, Magda (September 2014). "Fitness to Stand Trial under International Criminal Law". Journal of International Criminal Justice. 12 (4): 705–729. doi:10.1093/jicj/mqu056.
- ^ McMurtrie, Sheena. A Challenge to the Validity of the Parliament Act 1949: An Opportunity Lost. Statute Law Review, Volume 18, Number 1, pp. 46-57, 1997
- ^ England & Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1916-2007