Did you know a hotel owner saved 14 Americans during the Battle of the Bulge?

Sometimes the courage and compassion of a single individual can save many. This was the case with Peter Rupp, the owner of a hotel in the small Belgian village of Ligneuville, who saved 14 American POWs from summary execution during the Battle of the Bulge.
 
On December 17, 1944, the second day of the Battle of the Bulge, Waffen-SS troops herded eight American POWs into the yard next to the hotel and shot them dead one by one. Mr. Rupp saw this from a window, but his calls to other German officers nearby to stop the massacre went unheeded.

The next morning, U.S. troops passed through the village on their way to the battle at Malmedy, the later passed through again, in the opposite direction, in full retreat. A single Sherman tank (The M4 Sherman) was left behind in front of the hotel to guard the road, but it was rapidly overrun by SS forces belonging to Joachim Peiper’s combat group (The War Crimes of Joachim Peiper), which was also responsible for several other killings.
 
Fourteen new American captives were ushered into the hotel lobby by the same SS sergeant who carried out the executions the day before. Rupp confronted the sergeant, shouting and calling him a murderer. The man knocked out two of his teeth in response; Rupp was almost killed on the spot, but a higher-ranking SS officer intervened, saving the hotelier and telling the sergeant to lock the POWs in an empty room and treat them as he would want to be treated by the Americans.

Mr. Rupp and the Americans were safe for the time being, but the situation was tense, and things could have taken an ugly turn at any moment. Over the course of the evening, the night and the following morning, Mr. Rupp made several trips to his secret cellar, where he kept hundreds of bottles of the finest cognacs and champagne. He plied the Germans in the hotel with a non-stop stream of fine liquor, keeping them happy and mellow. He even managed to get some cognac and food to the American soldiers with help from his wife, who was Swiss and pretended to be a member of the Swiss Red Cross and thus responsible for the prisoners’ provisions. The situation was defused, and the captives were taken away to a POW camp where their fate was certainly better than a summary execution.
 
This was, in fact, not the first time Mr. Rupp proved his courage during the war. He was the member of a local resistance group, and used the hotel as a waystation on the “underground railroad” that rescued downed Allied airmen. He did this behind the back of his own family. On one occasion, his wife noticed that some of the food was missing, and wanted to ask the Gestapo for help catching the mysterious thief – her own husband.

After the war, Mr. Rupp led the effort to build a small monument to the eight murdered American soldiers next to the hotel, donating the lion’s share of the funds.

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