Wojciech Najsarek

Wojciech Najsarek (22 April 1900 – 1 September 1939) was a Polish soldier and a worker of the Polish State Railways. Chief of the Gdańsk-Westerplatte train station, he was killed during the first minutes of the German attack on the Polish enclave of Westerplatte. He was the first casualty of the Battle of Westerplatte, and one of the first victims of the Invasion of Poland and of World War II.[1][2][3]

Wojciech Najsarek
Born22 April 1900
Jaćmierz, Austria-Hungary
Died1 September 1939 (1939-10) (aged 39)
Westerplatte, Poland
Service/branchArmy of the Second Polish Republic
Years of service1920 - 1939
RankStaff Sergeant
Battles/warsWorld War 2, Battle of Westerplatte
AwardsOrder of the Virtuti Militari
Spouse(s)Maria née Ostrowska

Biography

Wojciech Najsarek was born 22 April 1900, in Jaćmierz near Sanok, then in Austro-Hungarian Galicia.[4] He graduated from a local primary school. In 1920 he volunteered for the Polish Army and took part in the Polish-Bolshevik War. Following demobilisation he joined the Polish State Railways and at the same time continued his education. In 1926 he married Maria née Ostrowska.

In 1933 he graduated from a gymnasium in Brześć nad Bugiem and was sent for a yearly course for railway managers in Poznań. After that he served as a stationmaster in Reda. On 19 April 1937, he became the stationmaster of Gdańsk-Westerplatte station, a Polish trade outpost within the Free City of Danzig, directly adjacent to a military depot at Westerplatte. At the same time he held a military rank of starszy sierżant (equivalent to the rank of Staff Sergeant).[4]

On 1 September 1939, at 4:50 AM, only five minutes after the outbreak of hostilities, he was alarmed by strange noises and left his outpost to check what was happening, only to find a German military unit heading for the nearby Westerplatte military outpost. He received numerous heavy machine gun wounds and died instantly, as the first Polish victim of the Battle of Westerplatte and one of the first victims of World War II.[1][4] In 1945 he was posthumously awarded the Virtuti Militari, the highest Polish military decoration.[5] In the 1970s the place of his death was marked with a memorial stone.

In the film Westerplatte, he is played by Józef Lodynski.

Sources
  1. Teresa Masłowska (September 2007). "Wojenne drogi polskich kolejarzy" (pdf). Kurier PKP (in Polish). 2007 (35): 10. Wojciech Najsarek był jedną z pierwszych ofiar II wojny światowej.
  2. Józef Tischner (1987). Marxism and Christianity: the quarrel and the dialogue in Poland. Georgetown University Press. p. 225. ISBN 978-0-87840-419-3. Among them were Sgt. Wojciech Najsarek, the first Polish casualty of World War II...
  3. Andrzej Drzycimski (1990). Major Henryk Sucharski. Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich. p. 140. ISBN 978-83-04-03374-0. st. sierż. Wojciech Najsarek, zawiadowca stacji, poległ jako pierwszy z żołnierzy Składnicy, na posterunku, na stacji PKP Westerplatte
  4. M. Wróbel (2009). "Najsarek, Wojciech". westerplatte.pl (in Polish). Retrieved 11 October 2009.
  5. "Najsarek Wojciech sierż". Muzeum Historyczne Miasta Gdańska (in Polish). 2013.
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