Britain’s first OAP to be investigated for Nazi war crimes was a church-going quiet man who picked fruit for neighbours and drove around on mobility scooter
Stanislaw Chrzanowski, 96, from Telford, died last October not knowing his alleged role in the Holocaust was being probed
A PENSIONER who has become the first person in the UK to be investigated for Nazi war crimes gave his neighbours fruit from his trees and was a regular churchgoer, it has emerged.
Neighbours of Stanislaw Chrzanowski have spoken of a “gentle” figure who never spoke about the war and was regularly spotted on his mobility scooter around the streets of Telford, Shrops.
Mr Chrzanowski, 96, died in October last year not knowing he was under investigation after German prosecutors confirmed they are now looking through immigration records for possible new suspects in the UK.
The reports that the OAP was being investigated in Munich for the murder of civilians in his home town of Slonim in Belarus.
One resident, called Bruno, who lived next door to Mr Chrzanowski in a warden-assisted estate in the town said: "I knew him just as Stan and would always just say hello to him in passing.
"I knew he was Eastern European but we never spoke about the war. He was protective about his past but many people who lived through the war were like that in my experience.
"He used to grow plums and oranges in his back garden, a few times he would come past my house and give me some fruit he had just picked.
"I would always see him going down the street on his mobility scooter. Despite his age he still went out at least once a day to the shops or just to potter to church.
Carly Maddox, 31, who lived opposite Mr Chrzanowski for 12 years, claimed he had once beat her pet dog with a walking stick.
She said: "I remember one time I let my dog Taylor, a sweet-natured collie cross, run out on the green in the crescent which separated our homes and he hit it with a stick.
"Because of his age I didn't go mad, I just politely asked him to be careful and he blew up at me. He was shouting 'dog, dog' at me and waving his stick in the air."
Another resident said: "When he died last year the residents were informed. The next I heard about him was when I watched the news about his possible involvement in the war.
“You never know what is fact or false these days but if any of it is true then it’s awful to think we lived so close to someone who hid such terrible crimes.
“He never came across as someone with anything to hide really. He would wave to anyone he passed and I usually saw him scooting back to his home with a bag of shopping."
Mr Chrzanowski came to the UK after being taken as a prisoner of war and joining Allied forces.
His stepson John Kingston, of Holmfirth, West Yorkshire, first brought his case to the attention when he sent a dossier of evidence to the Met Police's war crimes unit.
Mr Kingston suspected his stepfather, who was an auxiliary working with invading Nazi troops, over stories he allegedly told him as a child.
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He went to Slonim in the 1990s to meet with people who claimed they had witnesses Mr Chrzanowski shooting prisoners at the death pits in forests.
British detectives quizzed him at the time, then aged 77, but the case wasn't taken up by the Crown Prosecution Service due to "insufficient evidence".
Mr Chrzanowski had always denied he was a war criminal.
Sadly, his stepson - who spent years campaigning for a prosecution - died last week at the age of 74.
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