Gratitude Friday 1 31 25 Guy Stern and the Ritchie Boys, Jewish Immigrant Heroes of WWII
“We were fighting an American war, and we were also fighting an intensely personal war. We were in that war with every inch of our being.” – Guy Stern to the Washington Post, 2005

I had some reference to the Ritchie Boys in passing, but a few weeks back I was working and an old 60 minutes episode ran on YouTube on the TV in the background. The episode featured a remarkable man named Guy Stern, who died at age 101 in December 2023. His New York Times Obituary is well worth reading. In his youth, he was the only member of his Jewish family to flee Nazi Germany. After coming to the US he served in the US Army. As he spoke German, he was trained at Camp Richie in Maryland, becoming a member of the Ritchie Boys, a special military intelligence unit composed of mostly Jewish immigrants from German, Austrian, and Czech. Another famous Richie Boy was author JD Salinger.
At Fort Richie military instructors taught intelligence-gathering collections and analysis to approximately 20,000 soldiers. It was the first that training in intelligence gathering and interrogation techniques was centralized in the US. It was near Cascade MD right on the PA border around five miles from Raven Rock Military Complex, the large underground nuclear bunker known as the underground Pentagon where Dick Cheney was during the 911 attack on the nation to ensure continuity of government in the event that attack was part of a larger threat.
The Richie boys were significant contributors to the war effort. For decades they remained silent about what they did. They were responsible for more than half of the actionable intelligence gathered in Europe during the war and persuaded whole German Units to surrender without a shot fired. They did not use threats of violence in their techniques as they were then as they are now known to be ineffective. The information they gathered saved lives in every battle fought in Europe following DDAY. Later in the war they ended up assisting in the liberation of Jewish concentration camps. Many died in covert or other military operations. Immigrants who sacrificed everything for our nation.
Guy may have been one of the most remarkable of the Richie Boys even as he would disagree. In that 60 minutes interview when it was suggested he was a hero, he remained modesr. He said the heroes were his friends long lost in the war but never forgotten. He saw himself as a soldier just doing his job. What Guy did following DDAY is to interrogate captive German soldiers and use the intelligence to support battle tactics.
The Richie Boys also played important roles in the Nuremburg Trials aka International Military Tribunal (IMT) prosecuting war crimes against some Nazi party, German Military and government officials responsible for some of the most heinous atrocities in world history. They were interpreters and some played important roles on the prosecution teams bringing justice in the name of millions who had died in the Holocaust. Can any of alive imagine what it would feel like to be so close to the people responsible for killing everyone you had known and all of their memories. I do not think we really have any frame of reference for something like that.
In that 60-minute interview it was noted that he was a remarkable person and the sole survivor in his family, but he saw himself as nothing special. Through to the age of 99 he vowed every day when he woke up since the war to live to be worthy of his life being spared. While in Germany, he earned a Bronze Star. Was a Knight of the Legion of Honor, awarded by the nation of France on International Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2017. He was interred at Great Lakes National Cemetery in Holly, Michigan.
The Richie Boys are nearly all gone now. Their legacy and contributions live on. For me, I consider them and other such heroes and what they did for us all when I see our American flag. In our era, where we struggle for a positive national identity to be proud of, we need to look no farther than people like this who embraced the values of our nation and sacrificed dearly for all of us. We have such an amazing reservoir of experience and perspectives to inform us on how to be and do better. For this, I am grateful.
What are you grateful for today?
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