Józef Kos

Who was Józef Kos?

Józef Kos was one of the last surviving veterans of the First World War and one of the oldest people in Poland at the time of his death. He was an ethnic Kashubian. In 1918 he served for the German Empire in the German Army during the last year of the war.

In Kashubia Kos attended a German language school when he was a child living in the small village of Bontsch. In this time it was in West Prussia, part of the German Empire.

In summer 1918, just before Kos turned 18 years old, the German Army sent him to train in Rastenburg in East Prussia. He and the other troops trained for three months before they began a march to Belgium, which was on Germany's western front, in order to deploy to the English Channel. After many weeks of marching at 40 kilometers per day, the war ended before reaching their destination. On his journey back to Poland, he witnessed the chaos in Germany as the country went through revolution and people stealing food just to have something to eat. He and other troops were given the opportunity to serve as border guards in the city of Danzig, which eventually became a free city after the war, but he declined the offer and went home.