An year-old American Jewish soldier arrived in the Army too late for World War II, and instead found himself a prison guard at Nuremberg, watching over Nazi prisoners while judges in their trials for war crimes determined their fate. The film will be shown Feb. Hilu died at 93, as the film was in production, according to the director, Elan Golod. At 18, Hilu was one of the few Jewish-American soldiers in charge of ensuring that senior Nazi generals and officials lived to see justice at the Nuremberg Trials.
Between and , the Allied powers tried people at Nuremberg who worked for the Nazis ; 61 were convicted and 37 were sentenced to death. Knowing the odds the Nazis faced, trial officials worried that suicide attempts might be frequent. The American soldiers who guarded the Nazis during the trials watched them from a barred cell window with a large lamp directed at them to illuminate their every move. Many American Jewish troops were the children of immigrants or immigrants themselves, according to Rugel.
Hilu came from a Sephardic Jewish family in Damascus, Syria. His grandfather was chief rabbi in Damascus and his parents came to the U. As an artist, Hilu never got along with his father, who expected his son to become a businessman, so he joined the Army to escape. Get the latest military news and culture in your inbox daily. Once Hilu was given orders to Germany by his sergeant, he had an hour to pack his bags, he wrote.
The rooms of the soldiers and prisoners were separated by a heavy wooden iron door. Hilu and his fellow soldiers were in charge of guarding the Nazi prisoners only while they were in their cells. The American guards had no weapons except a billy club attached to their belts. A different set of guards with white helmets were in charge of the prisoners during the trial. The prisoners saw a variety of visitors throughout the week, including high-ranking allied officers.
Every morning, a doctor came for a checkup, and a German barber for a haircut, trim, or shave. The prisoners ate out of Army mess kits and were given more food than the soldiers who were guarding them, Hilu said in his magazine piece. A German librarian also brought daily deliveries of art books to the prisoners which Hilu found ironic — many of the Nazi prisoners got to admire pieces by artists like Rembrandt van Rijn, who used Jewish models from the ghettos across Europe.
