WWII Interrogation Practices (The Ritchie Boys)
CFA 112, UB North Campus

From the vantage point of a former interrogator and informed by contemporary human rights abuses, Guy Stern examines boundaries between information gathering and torture.

Guy Stern is Distinguished Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Wayne State University, and is the author of numerous books and articles on 19th and 20th Century English and German Literature. At 14, he fled Germany for the United States, where in 1942 he enlisted in the Army and entered Camp Ritchie in Maryland for training in psychological warfare—becoming a “Ritchie Boy.” As a Master Sergeant in the Military Intelligence Service of the US Army, he then returned to Europe to interrogate German POWs. The Ritchie Boys faced double peril for being mistaken as Nazis by the Allies and for being recognized as Jews if taken into captivity by the fascists. Guy Stern and Fred Howard received the Bronze Star for their “method of mass interrogation” of German prisoners in France and Germany. Dr. Stern sits on the boards of the Kurt Weill Foundation and of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Excerpts of Christian Bauer´s film The Ritchie Boys (2004) will be screened. (http://www.ritchieboys.com/)