Arts & Entertainment
Another Chapter
Documentary sheds light on story of Jewish refugee GIs.
I Tom Tugend
Jewish Telegraph Agency
were captured by the Germans.
Ten of the Ritchie veterans, now mostly in their 80s
but with sharp minds and memories, recall their expe-
riences in the 90-minute film.
"Our teams were bright," Victor Brombert says, "not
always courageous, not the best military, but our hearts
were in it."
The Battle of the Bulge also proved to be one of their
most frustrating experiences. Through interrogations of
civilians and POWs, a Ritchie team realized that the
enemy was building up a massive force of
troops and tanks.
Some of the team drove through the night
to corps headquarters to warn of the immi-
nent assault, only to be told to stop worrying
and go back to their units. The Germans
struck within hours.
Not all the recollections are grim. With the
fall of Berlin, some of the boys concocted a
story that they had captured Hitler's personal
toilet and latrine orderly, which made head-
lines across the world.
Among the 10 veterans interviewed, two
went on to become distinguished university
professors, while a third, Fred Howard, gained
fame of a different kind by inventing L'eggs,
the pantyhose packaged in eggshell replicas.
One of the professors, Guy Stern, is a
retired Wayne State University professor of
German language, literature and
culture, who served as an inter-
rogator among the Ritchie Boys.
He came to the United States in
1937 and was drafted into mili-
tary service in 1942.
"The film is an absolutely
accurate account of what we did
and of the diversity of opinions
about our experiences:' says
Stern, 83, of West Bloomfield,
whose work involved getting crit-
ical information from German
prisoners of war.
"The filmmaker had three
interviews with me, and we spent
about 18 hours talking about
those times."
Stern, who recalls his military
training as the toughest training
he ever had, will be at the film's
screening — 7 p.m. Saturday,
Nov. 5, at the Birmingham 8 —
to answer questions from the
audience. He already has partici-
pated in six such screenings,
including one at the Israeli Film
Festival in Jerusalem.
erner Angress was attached to a U.S. para-
troopers' platoon winging -behind German
lines on D-Day, when a ser
geant told him he'd be the =first to jump.
"But I've never jumped before in my
life Angress protested.
"That's OK:' the sergeant said, "the
newest guy always goes firse
Angress was one of the "Ritchie Boys:' a
special army-unit made up mainly of
young Jewish refugees from Germany,
whose World War II exploits have been
recorded for the first time in a German-
Canadian co-produced documentary
titled The Ritchie Boys by German film-
maker Christian Bauer.
The Ritchie Boys got their names from
Camp Ritchie in Maryland, where the ex-
refugees reported for duty at the Military
Intelligence Training Camp. The new
recruits joked that the camp's initials
. stood for Military Institute of
Total Confusion.
Fred Howard, right, poses for a photo with fellow Ritchie Boys on the day
From the beaches of
Germany surrendered, May 8, 1945.
Normandy until the end of the
war, the Ritchie Boys served on
and behind the frontlines as
interrogators, psychological
warriors, authors of anti-Nazi
leaflets and broadcasts, experts
on the inner workings of the
German war machine and con-
centration camp liberators.
Urging German soldiers to
surrender from trucks
equipped with loudspeakers,
they became a favorite target of
enemy artillery. They encoun-
tered their greatest danger in
the Battle of the Bulge.
During a last, desperate
push, the German army infil-
trated English-speaking
German soldiers in GI uni-
forms into the American lines.
The infiltrators often spoke
English with the same German
accent as the Ritchie Boys.
In the heat of battle, the
A
Ritchie Boys were likely to be
The Ritchie Boys today: Clockwise from top left: Victor Brombert, professor of Romance and compara-
shot by their fellow GIs, and a
worse fate awaited them if they tive literature, Princeton; Fred Howard, businessman, New York; Guy Stern, professor of German, Detroit;
Si Lewen, artist, New Paltz, N.Y.
54
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Suzanne Chessler contributed to
this article.
November 3 2005
JEN