Lives Lost: Veteran guarded Nazis during war crimes trial
Emilio DiPalma was, as he liked to say, just a kid from western Massachusetts when he found himself in a front-row seat to history as a courtroom guard in Nuremberg, Germany, during the first and most famous trial of Nazi war criminals in 1945.
The 19-year-old had fought Germans on the front lines in World War II, lost friends in battle and witnessed horrors that would forever change his view of the world. Then he found himself standing guard over Adolph Hitler's top officers as they were brought to justice for atrocities committed by the Third Reich.
“To this day, I can hardly believe that any human being could do such cruel things to another,” DiPalma wrote in the memoir he published with the help of his daughter decades later.
DiPalma died on April 8 at the age of 93 after contracting the coronavirus at the Holyoke Soldiers' Home in Massachusetts, where he was being cared for because of dementia. More than 70 other veterans sickened with the virus at the Soldiers Home have died, making it one of the deadliest known outbreaks at a long-term care facility in the U.S.
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EDITOR’S NOTE: This is part of an ongoing series of stories remembering people who have died from coronavirus around the world.
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The son of Italian immigrants, DiPalma grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts, before being drafted into the Army in 1944 at the age of 18. He left home a “happy go-lucky” kid who was gung-ho for battle, he said, but the gravity of the war quickly crashed down on him.
“It doesn’t take long that you realize this is not John Wayne movies, this is serious. And you grow up an awful lot while you’re up there," DiPalma said in a video interview with the New York State Military Museum.
As a member of the 79th Infantry Division, DiPalma watched friends die and...
