By EWAN FLETCHER

Last updated at 12:55 21 October 2007

The BBC's hottest new comedy star Peter Serafinowicz yesterday abandoned an attempt to use the Human Rights Act to stop newspapers revealing his grandfather was the first man in Britain to face a trial for Nazi war crimes.

The 35-year-old mimic – currently starring in a 30-minute BBC2 satirical show that carries his name – has been anxious someone will make the link as his fame grows.

His grandfather Szymon Serafinowicz appeared at the Old Bailey in 1997 accused of killing Jews while he was a police chief in his native Belarus when it was occupied by the Nazis.

However, the jury eventually ruled the former carpenter, who fled to Britain at the end of the war, was not fit to stand trial because of dementia.

He died that year aged 85.

The alleged war criminal's grandson has received rave reviews for The Peter Serafinowicz Show, a fast-moving mix of absurd sketches featuring the comedian's outlandish take on stars such as Sir Paul McCartney, Simon Cowell and Al Pacino.

The BBC is convinced he is their next major star and has ordered a huge publicity drive to ensure his success.

This includes prime-time trailers, a starring role on last week's Friday Night With Jonathan Ross alongside Take That and Terry Wogan, plus interviews and profiles in selected newspapers.

Serafinowicz's unflinching self-confidence is lauded, along with his Bafta nomination for his Tomorrow's World spoof Look Around You and the fact that he has just had a baby son Sam with the Stardust and Green Wing actress Sarah Alexander.

What never comes up is what his grandfather did in the Second World War that led to him being the first man in Britain charged under the 1991 War Crimes Act.

When The Mail on Sunday approached Serafinowicz to ask him why he never spoke about his grandfather, he contacted showbusiness lawyers Schillings, who represented BP boss Lord Browne in his disastrous court case – also brought under the Human Rights Act – which led to the peer's resignation.

Schillings insisted that the allegations against Serafinowicz's grandfather were a private matter under the Human Rights Act.

It demanded that the paper gave an undertaking never to publish the comedian's connection to the war crimes case.

When The Mail on Sunday refused, it said it would advise Serafinowicz to go to a High Court judge to secure an emergency injunction banning publication of the story.

It appeared last night that he had decided to reject its advice.

It was 12 years ago – just as the comic was starting on the comedy circuit – that his grandfather was arrested at home in Banstead, Surrey.

He was remanded in custody for his alleged role in killing three Jews in the town of Mir in 1941. At subsequent committal hearings it was decided there was a case to answer.

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Serafinowicz does not talk about his background much except to say his family loves comedy.

However, he jokes about his own roles, saying: "I prefer the evil ones because I'm quite evil in real life, so it's not much effort."

But a friend he told about his grandfather said: "Peter is horrified by it all. It haunts him."

Apart from the one spectacular, dark family secret, the Serafinowiczes appear the epitome of British working-class respectability.

The grandfather and his Polish-born wife Jadwega had a son they also named Szymon.

The family fled to Britain after the war and were granted refugee status. The former police chief became a carpenter and lived quietly in Surrey.

In the Sixties, his scaffolder son moved to Liverpool and met post office worker Catherine Geary.

They married in 1971 and had Peter a year later. The peaceful existence was shattered more than 20 years later when a special unit at Scotland Yard was formed to review more than 350 reported cases of atrocities by non-Germans who fled to Britain.

All were dismissed with the exception of the Serafinowicz case, which was given the go-ahead by the then attorney general Sir Nicholas Lyell.

Sixteen witnesses from as far away as America and Siberia gave evidence during the 22-day committal proceedings.

All alleged Serafinowicz, who had been promoted to district commissioner by the Nazis, had enthusiastically helped eradicate the 3,000-strong Jewish population around the capital of Minsk.

Holocaust survivor Oswald Ruffeisen, who translated for Serafinowicz during the war, said the police chief was involved when a group of Jewish families were frogmarched from their homes and executed in the snow behind a barn.

Regina Bedynska said that in 1941 she saw four Jewish men and a woman with a child running from a death squad.

Serafinowicz raised his rifle and shot the woman dead.

Others claimed he was present during a Nazi house-to-house search for Jews, in which all those found were taken in groups to pits in the woods and shot. They said he was seen with a sub-machine gun.

Serafinowicz senior denied all charges. The comedian went to his grandfather's funeral months later.

Schillings said yesterday: "Our client's grandfather died before he was able to demonstrate that there was no truth in the allegations."