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OCTOBER 29, 2015 | The Jewish Home
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Forgotten Her es
THE BALTIMORE JEWISH HOME
JULY 1, 2021
Jewish Ritchie Boys By Avi Heiligman
Three Ritchie Boys who were German-born Jews
W
hile drafting and enlisting soldiers during World War II, the U.S. Army was look-
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Martin Selling, a German-born Jew, questioning German prisoners, 1944
ing for multilingual candidates. In particular, they were recruiting soldiers to be trained for the Military Intelli-
Practicing interrogation skills at Camp Ritchie
gence Service that had two branches. Japanese-speaking Americans were trained in Monterrey, California. Most members of this unit were Nisei, or second-generation Japanese Americans. Another unit was based in Camp Ritchie, Maryland, and consisted of men who spoke European languages, especially German. The Ritchie Boys, as they were soon called, consisted of many Jews born in Germany and other European countries. A recent documentary was recently made on the Ritchie Boys, but there is a lot more to the story and their heroic exploits with the Allies in Europe. The United States entered the war immediately following the Japanese attack on their naval base at Pearl Harbor. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill agreed that resources should be allocated to forces fighting Germany and then to fighting Japan in the Pacific. Military intelligence knew that this policy would mean that they would need language and cultural experts on Germany sooner than later. This paved the way for a course to be set up to train American soldiers that came from Germany and other European countries. The eight-week course taught the soldiers to be effective translators and interrogators and trained them in intelligence, counterintelligence, and physiological warfare. They often told German prisoners of war that if they
remained silent, they would be transferred to the Russian POW camp. This tactic worked many times. After training, the Ritchie Boys went on to serve in various units, and many were embedded with divisions that raced through Western Europe starting in mid-1944. Many of the Jewish soldiers were refugees from Germany, and several still had families in Europe. These soldiers not only were proficient in the German language but also knew the culture and mentality of the POWs they were interrogating. One of the Ritchie Boys was with the 82nd Airborne when a German POW (prisoner of war) came in for interrogation. The POW eventually gave him a map of a recently laid-out minefield. Martin Selling was another Ritchie Boy who was able to persuade a German medic to give his away his unit’s positions. Stephan Levy from the 6th Armored Division was yet another Ritchie Boy who got information out of a German officer as to the exact location of his unit’s position. The intelligence from these last two interrogations led to successful American attacks on the German positions. This type of information was invaluable – and time sensitive –and was directly responsible for the saving of countless Allied lives. Knowing troop movements, how many enemy soldiers there were, and the morale of the enemy proved to be vital intelligence for the Allied commanders.
