the killers had left. He supposedly found his burned son, who later died in his arms. This incident was later commemorated with a statue at the Khatyn Memorial. Another 12-year-old boy, Alexander Petrovich Zhelobkovich (1930–1994), escaped from the village before the soldiers were able to fully surround it. His mother woke him up and put him on a horse, on which he escaped to a nearby village. After the war, he served in the armed forces and became a reserve lieutenant colonel. Vladimir Antonovich Yaskevich (1930–2008) hid in a potato pit 200 meters from his family house. Two soldiers noticed the boy, but spared him. Vladimir noted that they spoke German between themselves, not Ukrainian. Sofia Antonovna Yaskevich (later Fiokhina) (1934–2020), Vladimir's sister, hid in the cellar from the early morning of the massacre. As an adult she worked as a typist, and was last reported living in Minsk. Viktor Andreevich Zhelobkovich (1934–2020), a seven-year-old boy, survived the fire in the shed under the corpse of his mother. As an adult, he worked at the design office of precise engineering, and was also reported to be living in Minsk. Two other Khatyn women survived because they were away from the village that day. Tatyana Vasilyevna Karaban (1910 – c. 2000s) was visiting relatives in a neighboring village, Seredniaya. Sofya Klimovich, a relative of Karaban, was also visiting a nearby village. After the war she worked at the Memorial for several years. Post-war trials In 1946, the officer who ordered the massacre, Bruno Pavel, was prosecuted at the Riga Trial and executed. Ivan Melnichenko, the leader of the Dirlewanger unit which committed the massacre, was fatally shot by NKVD agents on 26 February 1946 while resisting arrest. Multiple collaborators who participated in the massacre were tried in the 1960s and 1970s. Some of them were executed. The commander of one of the platoons of 118th Schutzmannschaft Battalion, former Soviet junior lieutenant Vasyl Meleshko, was tried in a Soviet court and executed in 1975. The chief of staff of 118th Schutzmannschaft Battalion, former Red Army senior lieutenant Hryhoriy Vasiura, was tried in Minsk in 1986 and found guilty of all his crimes. He was sentenced to death by the verdict of the military tribunal of the Belorussian Military District. Vasiura was executed in 1987. The case and the trial of the main executioner of Khatyn was not given much publicity in the