Kirkby Malzeard & Laverton

Harold (Bill) Scruton

Bill was born in Wakefield in 1907, and after World War ll came to live in Grantley, Laverton and Kirkby.
He was a member of the British Expeditionary Force at the beginning of World War ll but was captured in France by German forces in 1940 and was then sent East to work on farms near the Baltic coast and in 1945 was being held in Stalag XX-B, Gross Golmkau, 30 km south of Gdańsk.

In January 1945, Bill, along with a group of fellow prisoners, carried out a remarkable act of bravery involving a young Jewish girl called Sara Matuson.
Sara was a 16-year-old Lithuanian Jew, and her mother and older sister were among 1,200 women and girls force-marched across Poland from the Stutthoff death camp. By the time they reached the outskirts of Gross Golemkau, a German-speaking village of scattered farms and frosty fields 24 miles south of Danzig, only 300 were still alive.
Compelled to escape by her mother, Sara succeeded in leaving the line in search of food but was spotted and chased by locals and took refuge in the barn. Severely undernourished and exhausted, Sara was discovered by Stan Wells, a prisoner of war working on the farm, who informed her that the locals had given up their search. He reassured her and returned with food and, with the help of his fellow prisoners, Bill Scruton included, smuggled Sara into Stalag XX-B.
For around three weeks, Bill and the others hid Sara in the hayloft of a barn that housed the horses of the local police station and despite the risk of discovery, nursed her back to health. They left Sara in the care of a sympathetic local woman when they were ordered on a forced march themselves, though advancing Russian forces soon liberated all involved.
Sara survived and after the war moved to America where she married and had children. She never forgot the 10 British Prisoners of War who saved her life. Each of the men were awarded a posthumous medal – Righteous Among Nations.
In 2013, six of the group’s families were identified and given the posthumous award of British Hero of the Holocaust. Bill Scruton’s nieces, Mavis Shaw and Barbara Topham were traced and awarded his medal which is now on permanent display in the Eden Camp Medal Room.

Bill, who worked for West Riding County Council, and his wife, Ivy, had been living in Grantley after the war, and moved to The Hope Inn in Laverton in December 1957. In 1980 they moved to Mudros on Main Street, Kirkby Malzeard until his death in October 1988.
For more information:
https://www.deseret.com/1989/4/27/18804560/british-prisoners-became-girl-s-rescuers/