Wojciech Najsarek

Who was Wojciech Najsarek?

Wojciech Najsarek was a Polish soldier and a worker of the Polish State Railways. A headperson 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 one of the first victims of the Polish Defensive War and of World War II.

Wojciech Najsarek was born April 22, 1900, in Jaćmierz near Sanok, then in Austro-Hungarian Galicia. 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 April 19, 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.