A 97 year old Kirkby great-grandfather has emerged as one of the unsung heroes of World War II. Walter Nazar – his real name is Wladyslaw – was captured by German forces when the Nazis overran Poland at the start of the war. He was a 12 year old boy, but with other men and boys he was transported to Germany and used for slave labour. After escaping he joined the French resistance before linking up with the US forces in the 1258th Combat Engineer Battalion Company B after D-Day.
© Ashfield District Council
He was unable to return to Poland after the war because the rise of Communism in eastern Europe and the Iron Curtain meant life would be too difficult. He made a new life in the UK and has lived in Kirkby for more than 70 years with his wife of 66 years, Judy. The couple have four children, seven grandchildren and eight great grandchildren.
Tomorrow, Walter will be guest of honour at a special Ashfield district civic church service to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day, the start of the Allies invasion and liberation of Europe.
In captivity, Walter was put to work for the Nazi war effort. He was forced to work first in an ammunition factory. He was then used a farm labourer before being moved to occupied France to build the concrete bunkers that German soldiers would use to protect themselves in their battles with Allied forces on D-Day and the months that followed.
Walter escaped his captors and joined local partisan resistance groups, attacking German patrols. Later, he was join an American combat division as an ammunition carrier. He would later work for US forces as interpreter for prisoners of war.
Ahead of tomorrow’s service, Walter recalled the day he was taken by force from his home town in Poland. “My mother sent me to buy some yeast from town, but German lorries pulled up and I was taken with other boys and old men”, he said. “They took us to a railway station and put us on trains to Germany to a slave camp. We were treated terribly, had very little to eat and slept on straw. I was living with Russian and French prisoners of war.”
He escaped with seven other slave labourers and joined up with French partisan fighters. “We were demolishing railway lines at night and hunting the Germans”, he said. “they were hunting us. We needed their weapons and supplies. One day we heard tanks but it was the American army.”
As the Allies rolled across France and into Germany, Walter was now an older teenager, but still too young to officially join up. But this was war, and normal rules went out of the window. He joined the US 1258th Combat Engineer Battalion Company B as they, and other Allies, liberated France and progressed through Germany.
After the war, Walter remained with US forces in Nuremberg as the Nazi leaders faced war crimes trials. He then moved to Britain with other eastern European exiles.
He spent time in Cambridge before moving to Nottingham. He met his wife Judy in 1953 and spent the rest of his working life in mining. He returned to Poland for a visit in the 1960s and was reunited with his mother and other family members.
His teenage wartime memories have stayed with Walter throughout his life, and still has nightmares. “It’s a cruel world, when I think of what happened to so many people, especially the women and children”, Walter said. “It still comes to me, at nighttime, it goes round and round in my head . . . you can’t forget that, you just can’t.”
Cllr Arnie Hankin, the chairman of Ashfield District Council, said: “It’s a privilege and a honour to be able to welcome Walter and Judy Nazar as we commemorate D-Day 80 and the part so many played in helping liberate Europe from the Nazis.”
Despite his heroic actions in World War II, Walter has never received any official recognition. His age at the time and the way he joined US forces meant that there was no official documentation recording the work he did. Tomorrow (Thursday 6 June) is the 80th anniversary of D-Day. On 6 June 1944 Allied forces mounted the largest amphibious invasion the world has ever seen. More than 132,000 troops, transported across the English Channel by 4,000 ships, landed on five beaches in Normandy to begin the liberation of Europe. It was the start of ten months of bitter fighting between Allied and German forces, leading to the surrender of the Nazi regime in May 1945.
