Review – The Ritchie Boys

Like most audience members, I already knew that the 1930s saw a massive exodus of Jewish people from Europe to America. Many people who could afford to flee Hitler’s expanding domain did so, and even those who couldn’t afford to take the whole family at least scraped together the cash for a kid or two. What never occurred to me – though in retrospect it should have been completely obvious – is that many of the young men who emmigrated to the United States enlisted in the Army and got sent right back to Europe, where their skills as native speakers of German made them excellent interrogators. Called “Ritchie Boys” after the fort where they did their intelligence training, these guys had a heck of a time during the war, not to mention a heck of a time recalling their experiences for this documentary. My particular favorite were the pair who exploited the captured Germans’ fear of the Soviets by dressing one of the two of them as a Russian officer (complete with a picture of Stalin in his tent) and threatening their captives with deportation. The technical quality is run-of-the-mill, but the subjects are fascinating. Worth seeing