The Ritchie Boys exhibit at the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills, Mich., July 24, 2011. After the German army's surrender, Guy Stern and the other Ritchie Boys took on a new assignment: hunting down top Nazi officers responsible for the atrocities that killed so many, including many of their loved ones. Jon Wertheim: Did you enjoy hunting Nazis? Guy Stern: Thank you for asking. 98-year-old Paul Fairbrook helped set up the German military documents section at Camp Ritchie a vast catalog of more than 20,000 captured German documents. Many were foreign-born or had lived abroad for significant amounts of time. The Ritchie Boys train at Camp Ritchie, Md., sometime during World War II. very important because you save life if you know where the mine "where is the machine gun nest?" Ritchie History Museum Links.
stories from a Nazi interrogator, now a Mill Another was Private First Class Leonard C. Brostrom, a member of the Mormon faith, who was awarded the prestigious Medal of Honor posthumously for his heroic actions in the Battle of the Philippines. Readers may be amazed to learn that the Ritchie Boys included five Marines who died on Iwo Jima, including two who graduated with a specialty of Terrain Intelligence) and were killed in action on the day the Marines stormed Iwo Jima (19 February 1945). And I gave myself the name Commissar Krukov. Jon Wertheim: I understand you you had sparring partners. I don't know.
And it was not until a few years ago that the son of Italian-Jewish Ritchie Boy Alessandro Sabbadini told the story of his fathers motivation and bravery in the book Unavoidable Hope. David Frey: A lot of what was learned and the methods used are important to keep secret. And I had no choice." His Jewish family left Germany in 1933 when he was 10. He was born in Berlin to a Russian Jewish family. Some of the prisoners were actual German POWs brought to Camp Ritchie so the Ritchie Boys could practice their interrogation techniques. Guy Stern became a professor and taught for almost 50 years. Most of the guys in basic training were Southerners who hated the Jewish boys from New York and busted our chops most of the time, George Sakheim, who had fled to the United States by way of Palestine, told POLITICO Magazine. Please take a moment to let our troops know how much we appreciate their service and sacrifice. All had experienced harrowing escapes from Europe and dangerous but productive returns. Our country owes them an enormous debt of gratitude for their courage and sacrifices. By the summer of 1944, German troops in Normandy were outnumbered and overpowered. They were all forced to do it. Jon Wertheim: Did you ever ask yourself why me? Jon Wertheim: That's what you were told. That changed over the years as the Ritchie Boys began to receive more recognition. But joy turned to horror as Allied soldiers and the world learned the full scale of the Nazi mass extermination. And there's nothing that I wanted more is to get some revenge on Hitler who killed my uncles, and my aunts and my cousins and there was no question in my mind, and neither of all the men in Camp Ritchie. For as casually as we often toss around the word "hero", sometimes no lesser term applies. Photo credit DoD/Holocaust Memorial Center, It was an emotional reunion, definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The case of Hans Habe stands out in my mind as the essence of the reason why the Ritchie Boys were able to use their intelligence (and motivation) to make an enormous difference. Guy Stern: Yes, that's my interrogation tent. Jon Wertheim: So there's all sorts of impact years and years and years after the war from this this camp in Maryland? It turns out that author J.D. I thought, "I'm never going to do that," but I was shown how to do it. With World War II, Camp Ritchie had a new, fascinating and mysterious mission. Nina Wolff Feld told her fathers story in Someday You Will Understand: My Fathers Private World War 2. That information is of critical importance because it tells you where certain units are, and if you know where certain units are, you know where the weak spots are. The U.S. Army had evidently decided that Martin Selling was a useful asset after all. Max Lerner: Because I remembered my parents. Jon Wertheim: This was one of the leaflets that was dropped out--. Guy Stern speaks at the opening of the Holocaust Memorial Centers Ritchie Boys exhibit and reunion at Farmington Hills, Mich., July 24, 2011. Hed endured a lot already, including three brutal months in Dachau concentration camp after Kristallnacht in 1938, before finding haven in America. What what did that entail? Most chose the eldest son, to carry on the family name. The Ritchie Boys exhibit is at the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills, Mich., July 24, 2011. And that's what-- that's what it did for me. Paul Fairbrook: Oh that is a very good question. Many landed on the beaches of Normandy soon after D-Day.
Guy Ritchie's The Covenant and why Hollywood is afraid of the Many of the Ritchie Boys went on to have successful civilian careers, including J.D. At one point, Max Lerner disguised himself as a German officer and snuck behind enemy lines - leading a team of American soldiers into a German depot at night and destroying the equipment. That was potentially lethal in Europe under fluid battlefield conditions, especially during the Battle of the Bulge, when the Wehrmacht infiltrated American lines with soldiers dressed in U.S. uniforms. One of the ways they identified subjects wanted for interrogation was by consulting a book - the Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects which listed enemy nationals suspected of committing tens of thousands of war crimes in Europe everyone from low ranking members of the armed forces to top Nazi officials.
Long-overdue Recognition Comes to the Ritchie Boys. The boys were members of a military intelligence unit; strongly discouraged from talking about their war, they didnt hold their first reunion until 60 years after it ended. January 2, 2022 / 6:52 PM Martin Selling, 24, was undergoing training as a U.S. Army medical orderly in February 1943 and chafing under a Pentagon policy that kept hima Jewish refugee from Germany and hence an enemy alienaway from any combat unit. The Department of Defense provides the military forces needed to deter war and ensure our nation's security. Germany surrendered on May 8th of that year.
Ritchie Boys Step back in time and remember the lead up to VE Day, or "Victory in Europe Day," when soldiers and civilians alike across the world celebrated the end of the years-long World War II in Europe. You want to convince them that you're trustworthy. Drawing on archival research, memoirs and interviews with several Ritchie Boys (there were 1,985 in all), he focuses on a half dozen. Jon Wertheim: How do you think we should be recalling the Ritchie Boys? Why do so few Americans know about this? Mr.
The Ritchie Boys | The Story And to take those heights against heavy firing, going up those steep cliffs, and of course, it had been done. Recruits were chosen based on their knowledge of European language and culture, as well as their high IQs. and he said "no, military secret.". Wayne State University Professor Ehrhard Dabringhaus, another attendee, was ordered shortly after the war to become the American control officer to Klaus Barbie, the notorious war criminal. That was the biggest weakness that the army recognized that it had, which was battlefield intelligence and the interrogation needed to talk to sometimes civilians, most of the time prisoners of war, in order to glean information from them. Wounded people. Fortunately, a book written by historian Beverley Eddy tells the story of Camp Ritchie and the Ritchie Boys in great detail and with professional skill. By Julia M. Klein August 26, 2017. How The Ritchie Boys Helped Win World War II For America.
As part of denazification, photos of Nazi atrocities were posted in German shop windows and Ritchie Boys led the country's citizens on tours of the concentration camps to educate the local population about the evil Hitler had perpetrated. David Frey is a professor of history and director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Jon Wertheim: This-- This is a remarkable story. David Frey: Some became ambassadors. And that's why civilians could be useful and soldiers could be useful, "where is the minefield?" Jon Wertheim: What do you remember from that? It was not only that short term impact on the battlefield. You really have to understand it helps to have been born in Germany in order to in order to do a good job. Embedded in every Army unit, they interrogated tens of thousands of captured Nazi soldiers as well as civilians extracting key strategic information on enemy strength, troop movements, and defensive positions. Although Ritchie Boy. Beginning in September 1944, the United States military trained Japanese Americans at Camp Ritchie, and their language skills were also used in the war effort, this time against Japan. The Ritchie Boys earned a reputation for delivering important tactical information fast, making a major contribution to every battle on the Western Front. Naturally, I turned to Dan Gross, the unofficial archivist for the Ritchie Boys. Jon Wertheim: That's what you called yourself? Max Lerner: It was my war. Besides their language ability, these soldiers were familiar with the culture and thinking of enemy soldiers, which would aid them in their efforts.
The Ritchie Boys and Questions of Death and Spies So I experienced viscerally, fear. It was an impact on war crimes. And they were motivated like few other American soldiers. David Frey: There were Ritchie Boys that were in the first wave on the first day at D-Day. Some didn't even go over to to Europe. Singer. It was Sunday, May 13, 1945, Henderson marvels. Guy Stern: Yes, doing my job interrogating. He project detailed every aspect of the German army's operations during the war, including how they were structured, how they mobilized and how they used intelligence. We were briefed that the Germans were not going to welcome us greatly. Many of the 15,200 selected were Jewish soldiers who fled Nazi-controlled Germany, which was systematically killing Jews. After their training, the Ritchie Boys were dispersed in different Army units. The purpose of the tattoo was to identify a soldier's blood type in case a transfusion was needed or if his dog tags went missing. We had to-- we got a lot of German prisoners who were willing to help us catalog all those documents. Still, if they were captured, they knew what the Nazis would do to them.
Ritchie Boys Ritchie Boys So was Archibald Roosevelt, grandson of Theodore Roosevelt. Ritchie Boys Image by Sons and Soldiers. Jon Wertheim: You work 6 days a week, you swim every morning, you lecture, any signs of slowing down? One can readily point to the case of Ritchie Boy William R. Perl who outwitted Adolf Eichmann and saved an estimated 40,000 lives.
Ritchie Boy Those were the heroes. After following in his familys footsteps and serving in the military, Air Force veteran Lyle Apo turned to USO Hawaii for the opportunity to volunteer and help current service members. Now in their late 90s, these humble warriors still keep in touch, swapping stories about a chapter in American history now finally being told. Jon Wertheim: And you think because it had that signature, somehow that certified it. When U.S. soldiers fought Germany during World War II, there was one group that was particularly motivatedabout 2,000 mostly German and Austrian Jewish refugees who fled the Nazis and then returned to Europe to take on their tormentors as members of American military intelligence. But within a few months the government realized these so-called enemy aliens could be a valuable resource in the war. Another unusual sight: towering over recruits, Frank Leavitt, a World War I veteran and pro wrestling star at the time, was among the instructors. Guy Stern: Yes, even last night. Then shaping the cold war era, they really played a significant role. You know, I don't talk like an Alabama person or a Texan. The very aspect of these SOBs now being at my command (laugh) gave me also some personal satisfaction. Many of these soldiers landed at Normandy, France, on D-Day, June 6, 1944, and others followed to perform their specialized tasks, which provided advanced intelligence to allied forces regarding German war plans and tactics. You sort of swing it around the neck from behind and then pull. . Since Stern spoke German he was tasked with the interrogation of prisoners of war and defectors. Approximately 14%, or 2,200, of them It was wonderful to be part of them. David Frey: All in service of winning the war. Max Lerner: It gave me a great deal of satisfaction. David Frey: Well the most important part of the training was that they learned to do interrogation, and in particular of prisoners of war. Guy Stern: Yes, that carried weight and the belief in the printed matter was very great. "Enjoy" is perhaps not the right word. Jon Wertheim: What do you think is the greatest contribution of the Ritchie Boys?
The Ritchie Boys - Introduction One can also point to a Ritchie Boy One can readily point to the case of Ritchie Boy, who outwitted Adolf Eichmann and saved an estimated 40,000 lives. Enter. Bill. Sons and Soldiers concentrates on six of them, two deadincluding Selling, who passed away at 86 in 2004but who left detailed memoirs, and four still flourishing in their 90s. Jon Wertheim: What is it like when you get together and reflect on this experience going on 80 years ago? Since the story of the Ritchie Boys remained relatively unknown for a half-century or more, it was often left to their children and grandchildren to bring their accomplishments to light. Walter Midener, an attendee, was awarded the Silver Star. Jon Wertheim: What do you remember feeling that day? The Ritchie Boys discovered that the Nazis were terrified of ending up in Russian captivity and they used that to great effect. Frey noted similarities between the Jewish refugeeswho were considered enemy aliens until mid-1942 because they had come from countries the United States was at war withand Japanese Americans who had been interned. Although Ritchie Boy Private Henry Kolm did not have the opportunity to serve overseas, he was able to make a significant contribution as an interrogator at Fort Hunt and as the principal facilitator in the integration of German Paperclip scientists and engineers such as Wernher von Braun into our society. Some never went back to Europe, but one retired to Berlin in 1988 and spent his final years visiting German schools to talk about his childhood under Hitler. Victor Brombert: Our interrogations - it had to do with tactical immediate concerns. That was the biggest weakness that the Army recognized that it had, which was battlefield intelligence and the interrogation needed to talk to sometimes civilians, most of the time prisoners of war, in order to glean information from them. David Frey: They were in fact. He is among the last surviving Ritchie Boys - a group of young men many of them German Jews who played an outsized role in helping the Allies win World War II. In addition to the Holocaust Museums award, the U.S. Senate passed a resolutionin 2021 honoring the bravery and dedication of the Ritchie Boys, and recognizing the importance of their contributions to the success of the Allied Forces during World War II.. A website by Dan Gross and Ritchie History Museum. Victor Brombert: What happened to one of the Ritchie Boys - at night on the way to the latrine, he was asked for a password and he gave the name - the word for the password - but with a German accent. Isn't it a miserable thing? What did work Is complicity. He responded with just the information I needed. Your average commander in the field might not. If a German POW wouldn't talk, he might face Guy Stern dressed up as a Russian officer. There are valid reasons to consider that the Ritchie Boys as a group made a unique and enormous contribution to our military success in World War II. They significantly helped the war effort and saved lives.. I wanted, desperately, to do something. The U.S. War Department used this collection of German documents to study Germany's battles with the Soviets on the Eastern Front, in order to be better prepared for any future conflict with Russia. Their mission: to use their knowledge of the German language and culture to return to Europe and fight Naziism. It was the viewing of that film that converted Dan into a Ritchie Boy Wannabe and launched him on a quest to help publicize this heroic group. They all became American success stories, businessmen or academics. ", Jon Wertheim: Did you ever confront a Nazi who said "this was morally reprehensible? Individual Ritchie Boys were cited for their contributions by being awarded over 60 Silver Star Medals for bravery. It was wonderful to see these people again. And incredibly, they were responsible for most of the combat intelligence gathered on the Western Front. Bruce Hendersons account of the Ritchie Boys, as the camps graduates came to be known, is full of arresting moments like Sellings arrival, almost all of them virtually unknown. Book Summary: The title of this book is Ritchie Boy Secrets and it was written by Eddy, Beverley Driver. The unit consisted mostly of young Germans, some of them of Jews, that had found a new homeland in America after their flight from the Nazis. And like so many war films it David Frey: Part of what the Ritchie Boys did was to convince German units to surrender without fighting. One can also point to a Ritchie Boy who was given the opportunity to shape the critically important program of psychological warfare by training nearly all the 850 members of the Mobile Radio Broadcasting Companies. HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. David Frey is a professor of history and director of the Center for Holocaust Studies at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. ", Jon Wertheim: "Unprincipled and dishonorable and I'm sorry?". The Ritchie Boys trained for war against these fake Germans with fake German tanks made out of wood. This was because he could speak fluent German; and indeed many of the interrogators at Nuremberg were German or Austrian Jews who had emigrated to America before WWII and were known as the Ritchie Boys. I tell you when we landed on Omaha beach, there were-- the whole heights had been occupied by the German artillery and I looked up on those heights and there were our American soldiers in full occupation on the day D plus 3 and I said to myself, "that can't be done." Its not just a story about Jewish emigres, Frey says, its also a story of what I would call marginal soldiers and their defense of this country.. Additional valuable information on the Ritchie Boys may be found in a forum-type Facebook page, Ritchie Boys of WWII, ably managed with considerable devotion by Bernie Lubran, son of Ritchie Boy Walter Lubran, and by Josh Freeling, whose great uncle was Ritchie Boy Kurt Kugelmann. This particular edition is in a Hardcover format. David Frey: Absolutely. An African-American Ritchie Boy William Warfield If you have ever heard a recording of William Warfield singing Ol Man River, from the musical Showboat by Jerome Kern, you will not have forgotten his deep, rich, bass-baritone voice. The soldiers were sent for training to Camp Ritchie, Md., beginning June 19, 1942, where they trained at the Military Intelligence Training Center thus their nickname, the Ritchie Boys. Jon Wertheim: What was it like for you, leaving Nazi Germany, escaping as a Jew, and the next time you go back to Europe it's to fight those guys? Guy Stern: God no. 97-year-old Max Lerner, an Austrian Jew fluent in German and French, served as a special agent with the counterintelligence corps, passing information to French underground resistance groups. They crossed into Germany with the Allied armies and witnessed the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps. In the Ardennes region of Belgium, the Germans mounted a massive counteroffensive, which became known as the Battle of the Bulge. The Ritchie Boys, a group of more than 19,000 refugees trained in Maryland to be U.S. intelligence specialists during World War II, are being honored in a 100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, SW Gross wrote to me saying, My Fort Ritchie, as it later became known, closed in 1998. A significant number of people, even those with some knowledge of Camp Ritchie, appear to visualize a graduate of the Armys Military Intelligence Training Center as follows: A physically-challenged man of the Jewish faith, who was born in Germany or Austria, joined the U. S. Army, and after being trained at Camp Ritchie served in the European Theater in World War II as an interrogator in relative safety behind the lines. I can't recommend this book enough! The largest set of graduates were 2,000 German-born Jews. G. Guy Ritchie's The Covenant is an intense action movie, full of gunfire and explosions that make you feel caught in the midst of danger. They did counterintelligence training. One of these was Staff Sergeant Stephen (Moose) Mosbacher who was awarded a Silver Star medal posthumously for gallantry beyond the call of duty. The USO relies on your support to help service members and their families. You had people coming from all over uniting for a particular cause. But at wars end, almost none found what they were really looking fortheir families. They were members of a secret group whose mastery of the German language and culture helped them provide battlefield intelligence that proved pivotal to the Allies' victory. 2023, A&E Television Networks, LLC. Early on in the war, the Army realized it needed German- and Italian-speaking U.S. soldiers for a variety of duties, including psychological warfare, interrogation, espionage and intercepting enemy communications.
Ritchie Boys Download our app to find events, locations and programs near you. Divisions that liberated concentration camps included hundreds of Ritchie Boys, who interviewed survivors. The intent of this web page, in addition to providing demographics and statistics not available elsewhere, will be to highlight individual secret heroes whose contributions were also singularly significant. There were roughly 9000 of these Jews in America and they specialized in the interrogation of German prisoners. Because Eisenhower had signed it and the Germans had an incredibly nave approach to everything that was signed and sealed. I mean this is you're taking your life in your hands here. In any major military conflict, there will likely be both individual heroes and groups of heroes. Jon Wertheim: That's the kind of thing you would know. We see those who are the greatest of the greatest generation. You know a lot about them already. Jon Wertheim: I see a tent in the background of that photo right in front of you. For more information, visit ushmm.org. And we were strafed and I said to myself, uh, "now, it's the end' because I could you could feel the machine gun bullets. Guy Stern: Defeating the Wehrmacht and the Waffen SS and all the fancy troops they had was a satisfaction both as a team member and as a personal satisfaction. Jon Wertheim: All in service of winning the war? Max Lerner recalls that in one respect at least, identifying most SS members was easy. The soldiers were sent for training to Camp Ritchie, Maryland, beginning June 19, 1942, where they trained at the Military Intelligence Training Center thus their nickname, the Ritchie Boys.. Guy Stern: They were killed either in Warsaw or in Auschwitz. He is a frequent contributor to The Washington Post, and has also written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, Politico Magazine, and CNN.com. Dozens of Ritchie Boys worked at the Nuremberg Trials as prosecutors, interrogators and translators. Produced by Katherine Davis. By the spring of 1944, the Ritchie Boys were ready to return to Western Europe this time as naturalized Americans in American uniforms. Both refugees like Fairbrook and Stern, as well as a number of American-born recruits with requisite language skills - were drafted into the Army and sent to Camp Ritchie. Camp Ritchie served the Maryland National Guard until 1942. The Allies liberated Paris in August and drove Nazi troops out of France. Main telephone: 202.488.0400 In 1943, he was drafted into the Army and in 1944 landed in Normandy after D-day as a "Ritchie Boy." Another was, , a member of the Mormon faith, who was awarded the prestigious Medal of Honor posthumously for his heroic actions in the Battle of the Philippines. Jon Wertheim: Sixty percent of the actionable intelligence? Many had fled Nazi Germany but returned as American soldiers, deploying their knowledge of German language and culture to great advantage.
Camp Ritchie, Maryland - Development of the Intelligence Training The group also included large numbers of first- or second-generation Americans who still spoke German or other languages at home, Frey says. David Frey: Right. Ritchie Boys also collected evidence which led to the prosecution of many high ranking Nazis including Hermann Goering, head of the Luftwaffe; Rudolph Hess, deputy furher to Adolf Hitler; and Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the Wehrmacht, Germany's armed forces. The Ritchie Boys were one of World War IIs greatest secret weapons for U.S. Army intelligence, said Stuart E. Eizenstat, shortly before becoming chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2022, when the museum bestowed the Ritchie Boys with the Elie Wiesel Award, its highest honor.
Ritchie Boys Now 98, Fairbrook is the former dean of the Culinary Institute of America. We worked harder than anyone could have driven us. Hundreds of Ritchie Boys were attached to divisions that liberated concentration camps and interviewed former prisoners to document the atrocities that took place. Salinger, author of the classic book The Catcher in the Rye.. Jon Wertheim: You didn't want to be identified as Jewish going back to Western Europe. The evidence was before us. Individual Ritchie Boys were cited for their contributions by being awarded over 60 Silver Star Medals for bravery. First published on January 2, 2022 / 6:52 PM. Following the war, some of the Ritchie Boys were used as interrogators during the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals. In a different way, the contributions made by a small team or by a large group of individuals may also save lives and deserve to be called heroic. Victor Brombert: And at great effort we found people, we arrested them, we were proud of doing that. Paul Fairbrook: They sent us back to Camp Ritchie and they created something that I call the equivalent of the Library of Congress. David Frey: The purpose of the facility was to train interrogators. History professor David Frey runs the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. The Ritchie Boys were members of a secret American intelligence group whose mastery of the German language and culture proved critical to the Allies' victory over Hitler. David Frey: Because it involves military intelligence, much of it was actually kept secret until the - the 1990's. Guy Stern: And some we didn't break but 80% were so darned scared of the Russians and what they would do. David Frey: They made a massive contribution to essentially every battle that the Americans fought - the entire sets of battles on the Western Front.