Off to fight Hitler: Cedarhurst Mayor Andrew Parise, liberator, remembers his war

By Michael Orbach

Issue of June 4, 2010 / 22 Sivan 5770

When Andrew Parise was 18 he went off to fight Hitler. Rather than waiting to be drafted into World War Two, he and several friends enlisted in the army immediately after graduating from Lawrence High School.

“Then you were gung-ho,” he told The Jewish Star from his office in Cedarhurst Village Hall where he has served as mayor for the last 15 years. “Then everybody was a hero."

Assigned to the 87th Golden Acorn Division as a combat engineer, Parise was responsible for sweeping mines, blowing up bridges, and disabling fortifications that blocked American tanks. The science behind disabling mines was still relatively new.

“Unfortunately, you only know about them when someone sets them off,” Parise said, describing the state-of-the-art method of deactivating mines at the time, which consisted of a grappling hook attached to a clothesline.

After six months of training Parise’s division was shipped off to Liverpool, England to invade France.

Seven days after landing, Parise found himself embroiled in combat at the ancient fortified city of Metz where his friend Chet Cafasso, who, like Parise, grew up in Inwood, was seriously injured. A month later, the 87th Division was assigned to rescue the 101st, which was pinned down by the Nazis in what was known to Americans as the Battle of the Bulge. It counted among the deadliest fights of the war, lasting a biblical 40 days and 40 nights. During one of those nights, Parise noticed a group of American soldiers with red kerchiefs around their necks. Parise alerted his superiors and the soldiers — actually German spies — were apprehended.

Eventually the Nazis were pushed behind the Siegfried Line, a nearly 400 mile long series of bunkers, tunnels and tank traps that divided France from Germany. But the battle took a heavy toll: 19,000 US soldiers killed. Some bodies were only found after the spring thaw, Parise said.

Parise was part of the advance combat team that broke through the Siegfried Line. He and his fellow combat engineers had to deal with the notorious pillboxes, heavily fortified huts from which Nazi gunners fired through slits. Under cover of darkness the combat engineers blew the huts up with dynamite or welded shut their entrances. Parise’s best friend, the squad leader, was hit.

Towards the end of April, the 87th liberated the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. By the time the unit arrived the Germans had already fled, taking the live prisoners with them. Only corpses were left behind.

“Eisenhower came out with an order — every soldier had to visit the camps to witness what went on there so there would be no question there was a Holocaust,” Parise said, still struggling 70 years later to describe what he saw. “It was a horrific.”

A month later, the 87th met the Red Army in Czechoslovakia. Parise was hit in the knee by sniper fire from a German holdout. The very next day, victory was declared in Europe.

After his recovery, and during a month long furlough, Parise married his high school sweetheart, Lillian, who passed away in 1995. Parise was to have deployed with the first American troops to invade the Japanese mainland, but during his honeymoon, atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war.

Parise returned home and began what would be a lifelong career in government.

“I like doing things for people,” Parise explained. “I never made any money, just a living.”

He has lived in Cedarhurst since 1971. His office in Village Hall is decorated with memorabilia from the war. A map on the wall charts the 87th’s path through Europe, and a glass case contains more than half a dozen medals accumulated during his service. In his closet hangs the heavy size 36 uniform Parise wore in combat.

“I would’ve done the same thing,” Parise, now 86, said about enlisting. “It was an experience. In World War Two you had a cause. Today you don’t have the country behind you. Vietnam, Korea — What thanks did they get? You did something for your country, you were not forgotten.”

Also in his office, Parise also keeps a black leather photo album held together with rubber bands. It includes photos that Parise found in the living quarters of a high-ranking German officer, as well as Parise’s own photographs from the war. At the back is a letter sent to service members from the commander in chief, President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

“Never were the enemies of freedom more tyrannical and more arrogant...” the letter reads. “Yours is a G-d-fearing, proud courageous people who throughout its history has put its freedom under G-d before all other priorities.”