The Jewish Richie Boys: US Soldiers of World War II

Nadene Goldfoot & Donald Eichman

The “Ritchie Boys” is a term used for American soldiers who trained at Camp Ritchie during World War II. At Camp Ritchie, military instructors taught intelligence-gathering collections and analysis to approximately 20,000 soldiers. Several thousand of these soldiers were Jewish refugees who had immigrated to the United States from Europe to escape Nazi persecution.  Approximately 14%, or 2,200, of them were Jewish refugees born in Germany and Austria.

Camp Ritchie was much more diverse than many other military camps. 44% of the soldiers at Camp Ritchie were born outside of the United States, and 19% were born in Germany. Many of the soldiers spoke multiple languages, and it was not uncommon to hear a variety of languages spoken around the camp. 

Soldiers who trained at Camp Ritchie were not commonly called “Ritchie Boys” during World War II. The term became widely used after German filmmaker Christian Bauer released a documentary called “The Ritchie Boys” in 2004. 

The US Army grew from 200,000 soldiers in 1939 to 1.4 million in 1941. But that Army did not have a program for training officers and noncommissioned officers to gather or analyze battlefield intelligence, particularly through interrogation of prisoners of war.                   

Born December 31, 1880, died October 16, 1959, he rose through the United States Army to become Chief of Staff of the US Army under Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, then served as Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense under Truman.

General George Marshall, the chief of staff of the US Army, worried that the United States military needed to prepare soldiers to do tactical intelligence work. In April 1941, Great Britain agreed that the United States could send military observers to learn from British combat units. Upon returning to the United States, the officers recommended the establishment of centralized training for intelligence staff.

The War Department selected Camp Albert C. Ritchie, a 632-acre camp near Cascade, Maryland. The camp had been used by the Maryland National Guard since 1926 and had been named after the governor of Maryland at the time. The state of Maryland leased the camp to the US government. The War Department shortened the name of the camp to “Camp Ritchie.” It was also known as the MITC, or the Military Intelligence Training Center. Colonel Charles Banfill of the US Army Air Corps served as the camp’s first commanding officer. The camp officially opened on June 19, 1942. The camp’s flag showed a German military map and a silver star with the letters “MITC” and a motto in Latin: “Fas est et ab hoste doceri” (“You must learn from the enemy”).

In total, 15,235 soldiers attended the eight-week training at Camp Ritchie. Only 11,637 of those soldiers finished the course and graduated. The training was difficult, and not everyone passed. But some soldiers were also pulled from training if their language skills were needed immediately for the war effort.                        

American soldiers dressed as German troops add realism to the training GIs undergo at Fort Ritchie, Maryland, for their roles as interrogators and interpreters during World War II. (U.S. Army Signal Corps)

The Ritchie Boys was a special collection of soldiers, primarily German-Austrian units, of Military Intelligence Service officers and enlisted men of World War II who were trained at Camp Ritchie in Washington County, Maryland. Many of them were German-speaking immigrants to the United States, often Jews who fled Nazi persecution. 

They were used primarily for interrogation of prisoners on the front lines and counter-intelligence in Europe because of their knowledge of the German language and culture. 

They were also involved in the Nuremberg trials as prosecutors and translators.  Approximately 2,000 Ritchie Boys were Jewish refugee soldiers who had escaped Nazi persecution and violence and had immigrated to the United States. Many of them trained as prisoner of war interrogators. Their fluency in German and knowledge of German customs assisted them in their work. Unlike Japanese American soldiers, who were not allowed to serve in the Pacific theater, German and Austrian refugee soldiers were specifically trained for service in Europe.                             

Two US soldiers cross the Rhine River

Two American soldiers cross the Rhine River into Germany on March 29, 1945. In the foreground is Jack Caminer, who emigrated from Germany to the United States in 1938. After he was drafted into the US Army, Caminer was sent to Camp Ritchie to prepare for intelligence work. Caminer participated in the liberation of Ohrdruf.  

• US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Jack Caminer

These soldiers were often highly motivated to return to Europe to defeat Nazism. Some had left loved ones in Europe and hoped to reunite with them—or to make sure the Nazis and other perpetrators were brought to justice. 

Upon graduating from Camp Ritchie,  these Jewish refugee soldiers traveled to the courthouse in Hagerstown, Maryland, where they naturalized as American citizens. Non-citizen soldiers were often able to become US citizens because of their military service. Many also “Americanized” their names, in part to prevent the Nazis from being able to identify them as Jewish if they were captured.                                

                US soldier Joseph Eaton, May 1945

US soldier Joseph Eaton (left) poses in his jeep while en route to Theresienstadt, May 1945. Eaton arranged the trip in the hope of finding surviving relatives. Born in 1919, he was a German-Jewish refugee who traveled to the United States on a children's transport sponsored by the German-Jewish Children's Aid. He was drafted into the US Army in 1943 and served in the Psychological Warfare Division of the 12th United States Army Group. 

Numerous Ritchie Boys were killed in action. Murray Zappler and Kurt Jacobs were both Jewish refugees born in Germany and members of an interrogation team. On December 16, 1944, their unit captured a group of German soldiers, whom Zappler and Jacobs interrogated. A few days later, a German attack forced their American unit to surrender. The German soldiers identified Zappler and Jacobs, who were separated from the other American captives and executed. Others were killed in battle, in bombings, or became prisoners of war. 

In August 2021, the United States Senate passed a bipartisan resolution honoring the service of the Ritchie Boys. In 2022, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum named the Ritchie Boys as the recipient of the Museum’s highest honor, the Elie Wiesel Award, for “their remarkable actions and heroism in helping to end the war and the Holocaust.

       ”Life in Camp Ritchie"     Excerpts from the film

This is the story of a group of young men in World War II - many of them Jewish-German refugees. They escaped the Nazis and found a new home in America.
They knew the language and the psychology of the enemy better than anybody else. Fighting Fascism was their goal. In Camp Ritchie, Maryland they prepared for their own kind of war.  In 2004, the documentary movie The Ritchie Boys by Christian Bauer featured ten of the Ritchie Boys.

On May 9, 2021, the story of the Ritchie Boys was presented in a forty-minute segment of the CBS news show 60 Minutes. Victor Brombert, 97, and Guy Stern, 99, gave personal testimony. On January 2, 2022, an expanded one hour version called "60 Minutes Presents" was shown. The program re-aired on July 3, 2022 due to its popularity.

PBS also put out a DVD about the Richi boys.  

 

Resource:  Thank you, cousin Don, for telling me the story about these Richie Boys.  Your memory was terrific!  We'll have to watch your DVD from PBS about it.  

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/ritchie-boys

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritchie_Boys

https://jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com/sons-and-soldiers/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_C._Marshall