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Jul 14
2011
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May 30th, 2011, 3:00 p.m.
Movie: The Ritchie Boys
Movie: The Ritchie Boys
They were young. The world's most unlikely soldiers. As teenagers they had escaped the Nazis. They trained in intelligence work and psychological warfare, and returned to Europe as US soldiers - with the greatest motivation to fight this war: They were Jewish. They called themselves “The Ritchie Boys”. Christian Bauer's film “The Ritchie Boys” tells a story that's never been told before. It begins in Camp Ritchie, Maryland, the birthplace of modern psychological warfare, and it ends with the defeat of Germany in May of 1945. After D-Day the Ritchie Boys became a decisive force in the war. Nobody knew the enemy, his culture and his language better than they. Their mission: as certain and break the enemy's morale. The surviving Ritchie Boys are in their eighties now. They never met for reunions, they did not join veteran associations. When the war was over, their German accents and unusual histories did not make them welcome in the usual veterans circles. In the end, the Ritchie Boys quietly left the war behind them and went on to enjoy quite remarkable careers - in arts and politics, in business and academia. They never forgot the war. They just never spoke about it. Gerry Bamberberger and Ernie Beissinger were members of the Ritchie Boys.










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