9781398503274
TheTicket Collector from Belarus tells the remarkable story of two interwoven journeys. Ben-Zion Blustein and Andrei Sawoniuk were childhood companions in 1930s Domachevo, once a holiday and health resort in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and then a struggling township in Belarus. During the events which followed its Nazi occupation in 1942, they became the bitterest of enemies. After the war, Ben-Zion made his way to Israel, and 'Andrusha the bastard' found work as a London Transport ticket collector.
They next confronted each other in the Old Bailey, 57 years later, where one was the principal prosecution witness, and the other had been charged with a fraction of the number of murders he almost certainly committed. Sawoniuk's guilt is rarely in doubt, but whether he will be convicted certainly is. Mike Anderson was gripped by the story, and so began his quest to find out all he could about this astonishing story and the people at the centre of it all. As he discovered, it was even more remarkable than he could ever have imagined.