"Die Ritchie Boys" Film Showed

As teenagers, they fled the Nazis from many European countries to the USA. Years later, lots of the young Jewish emigrants returned - as soldiers on secret military missions. They called themselves the "Ritchie Boys" after the Ritchie training camp in Maryland where they were prepared for psychological warfare. The story of the "Ritchie Boys" was told for the first time by the film director Christian Bauer in his film of the same name released in 2004.

The Jewish Museum Berlin invites you to the film showing followed by a discussion with the "Ritchie Boy" Werner Tom Angress on Thursday 1 February.

Together with the other Allied troops, they reached Europe on D-Day, 6 June 1944, after which they defected from their units and followed special orders. The "Ritchie Boys" fought a war of words. They observed their adversaries, interrogated prisoners and defectors and attempted to demoralize the German people with flyers and loudspeaker vans. They arrived in Paris even before the Allied troops, fought in the Ardennes and helped with the liberation of the concentration camps. Several of them later served as interpreters at the Nuremberg Trials.

Although they contributed significantly to shortening the war, they remained forgotten for a long time. Many made exceptional careers in politics, business, and science. Today they are in their eighties. In Christian Bauer's film, they tell of their memories of daring missions and a troop rich in humor and friendship for the first time.

Following the film showing, Werner Tom Angress will talk to "Welt" editor Sven Felix Kellerhoff about his time as a "Ritchie Boy." Born in Berlin, Werner Tom Angress fled at the age of 17 to the Netherlands with his parents in 1937. Two years later, he emigrated to the USA. He began training at the Ritchie Camp in 1943. Following missions in France, the Benelux countries, and Germany, he met his mother and his brother two years his junior again on Mother's Day 1945. They had survived in hiding in Amsterdam, while the father had been deported to Auschwitz and murdered in 1941. After returning to the USA, Werner Tom Angress became a professor of European history at Berkeley. He came back to settle in Berlin in 1988. -- www.juedisches-museum-berlin.de