Milford, Massachusetts

1921-2005

Flier

Emanuel Rempelakis looked up past the guidelines of his blooming parachute and saw the airplane, a burning B-17 bomber, disintegrate. On that day, September 12, 1943, Emanuel didn't know that he was the only flier in the 10-man crew to have gotten out whole, didn't consider that the other men, or parts of them, were accelerating past him at terrific speed.  He drifted through a sunlit German sky and looked down to see children in a field on the outskirts of Munich. 

This was the third time that Emanuel had bailed out of a destroyed airplane; the first two times he came down in Yugoslavia and was smuggled back to Allied territory by partisans.  Now he hit the ground hard and the children began to beat him senseless.

“Jude, Jude,” the Hitler Youth yelled, maybe two dozen of them, eleven, twelve years old, chanting “Jew, Jew,” because they had been taught to believe what they were told, and they had been told that the airmen destroying their factories and cities and armies were filthy Jews. So the children fractured his skull, broke his left arm, and colored his body with bruises.  They slashed his face with a knife and knocked out four teeth.

Emanuel was Greek Orthodox, for all the good it did him!  That sunny day, he suffered under the blows until a German policeman arrived and roused the boys away.  

Soon Emanuel was packed in a boxcar and moved to Luft Stalag IV.  There he shared stories with airmen from the U.S., Britain, and Canada.  Three shoot downs—no one could beat that! Had to be a World War II record!  To pass the time, Emanuel sewed a handkerchief recording his exploits, using a stolen needle and thread pulled from his socks. And he walked endlessly about the grounds, a regimen that helped him endure an 800-mile slog, the Black March, in 1945. 

Emanuel Rempelakis died in September 2005.  It began with a fall, three months earlier.  He tripped on a shoe and his hip broke when he hit the ground.  Then the doctors found prostate cancer and his heart grew weaker and weaker and the stroke was the final blow.