Theodore J. Paluch, 92, massacre survivor

Theodore J. "Teddy" Paluch, 92, a World War II veteran and a survivor of the infamous Malmedy massacre of American GIs during World War II, died Saturday, Aug. 8, of congestive heart failure at the Philadelphia Veterans Community Living Center.

Mr. Paluch, a Philadelphia native, was drafted into the Army at age 20 and deployed to Europe with the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion.

He was witness to the Malmedy massacre, a wartime atrocity in which 84 American soldiers who had surrendered in a field in Belgium were gunned down by the Waffen-SS on Dec. 17, 1944.

Mr. Paluch survived by playing dead and then crawling to safety. At that time, his extraordinary account of what happened, and those of others, galvanized the Allied forces to repel the Germans at the Battle of the Bulge.

Later, it helped form the grist of an attempt to prosecute the Nazi perpetrators, albeit an unsuccessful one. It also provided material for Danny Parker's 2013 book, Fatal Crossroads: The Untold Story of the Malmedy Massacre at the Battle of the Bulge.

Mr. Paluch made his life's work recounting his wartime experience, on file in the Library of Congress.

Anthony Waskie, a Temple University professor and close friend, spoke to him on July 24, as Mr. Paluch's health failed.

"I've been lucky. I have no regrets," Waskie said Mr. Paluch told him. "I cheated death on Dec. 17, 1944, and all the rest has been gravy. I wouldn't change anything."

Waskie said: "Ted was not the hero type, but a humble, basic guy who loved a good steak and his quiet role in a big event in World War II history. He will be missed."

Born in Philadelphia, Mr. Paluch grew up working at his family's candy shop in Kensington. While attending North Catholic High School, he paid close attention to news reports from Europe.

Mr. Paluch was playing pinball on Dec. 7, 1941, a Sunday, when he heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor from a friend. Immediately, he tried to join the Marine Corps, but the corps wouldn't take him.

In January 1943, though, he was drafted into the Army. "When you're young, you figure that you will do all the shooting. Well, it turned out a little different," he said in an oral history in 2009.

Mr. Paluch's battalion first saw action in the Hürtgen Forest just before the Battle of the Bulge. He saw trees explode as the Germans fired round after artillery round. "In just a matter of days, it seemed that every tree within sight was stripped bare of all limbs. It was a bloodbath in there," he said.

On Dec. 16, 1944, the German Wehrmacht attacked the U.S. Army through the Ardennes, a dense forest between Belgium and Luxembourg. The surprise offensive forced the Americans to retreat.

The next day, Mr. Paluch's unit was ordered to join the Eighth Corps. On the march to Malmedy, Belgium, his unit encountered German Waffen-SS troops.

"I saw them coming and our column stopped. I jumped out of the truck and into a ditch full of icy cold water," he recalled. "All we had was carbines and here was this tank coming down the road right at us. As it got close to us, it leveled its gun at the ditch, and the tank commander told us to surrender. What were we going to do? I threw my carbine down and threw my hands up."

Mr. Paluch and his comrades were taken captive by two SS troopers who searched them and assembled them in a field near the crossroads of Baugnez.

"We were standing there in the field with our hands up not knowing what was coming. I could hear guys praying, maybe I was, too . . . all you could think of was getting away," Mr. Paluch said.

Suddenly, one of the German vehicles came around the corner and its occupants began firing at the GIs. Other troopers joined in.

"Everybody started to drop and I dropped, too. I got hit in the hand as I went down. After that, as each vehicle passed, they fired into the group of us, laying there dead, or dying, in the field. Anyone that was moaning they came around and finished them off," Mr. Paluch said.

He lay in the field motionless for perhaps an hour.

Then a voice yelled, "Let's go," so Mr. Paluch got up and ran down a little road. Germans came out of a house and shot at Mr. Paluch as he dived into a hedgerow.

"I heard one of them come running towards where I was laying, and look me over. I could feel that guy standing above me, he could have shot me in the back and gotten it over with, but he didn't. I knew he was waiting for me to move, but I just laid there . . . dead still."

After a while, Mr. Paluch stuck his head up and saw no one, so he rolled down the hedgerow and crawled along a railroad line toward Malmedy. Along the way, he met two others from his unit. The men went to Malmedy and reported the massacre to American intelligence officers.

A total of 84 soldiers were killed that day. Their bodies were left to freeze in the field. Forty-three survived. The news that Germans were shooting prisoners of war outraged the American public, and strengthened the Allied resolve to counter the German offensive in the Ardennes.

While Mr. Paluch was in Malmedy, his wound was treated, and within two weeks he was back with the remnants of the 285th in the Ardennes.

After the war, he tried not to think about the Malmedy massacre, but the memory of his lost comrades haunted him.

"I tried to put it behind me, but it never really has been behind me, it's hard to forget. I don't know if we would have done that [to the Germans], but I don't really hold any animosity towards them, I wish it didn't happen, but it did."

When asked if the memories of the massacre affected him, his eyes welled with tears and his chin trembled.

"I lost a lot of good friends that day, I knew almost every one of those guys who were killed that day," he said. "I'm lucky. All my friends, all those young guys, they were all my age, with their whole life ahead of them. It never should have happened, and I hope no one ever forgets that it did."

Mr. Paluch returned to the States and held various jobs, including as a shipping supervisor for a manufacturer in South Jersey. He never married.

Mr. Paluch was a member of American Legion Post 405 at the Union League of Philadelphia and of the Delaware Valley Chapter, Veterans of the Battle of the Bulge. After he died at the veterans center, a wheelchair honor guard of veterans escorted his body to the hearse.

He is survived by his sister, Florence Evans, and many nieces and nephews.

Funeral services are to be from 9:30 a.m. until noon Monday, Aug. 17, at the Tomaszewski Funeral Home, 2728-30 E. Allegheny Ave., Philadelphia. Burial will be at a time to be determined at Washington Crossing National Cemetery in Newtown.