The Ritchie Boys Reviews (1 of 5)

The New York Times

Published Tuesday, October 31, 2006 12:00 pm
by Neil Genzlinger

An affecting group portrait - Remembering a Small but Important Contribution to the Greatest Generation

Those whose tolerance of Greatest Generation war stories isn’t exhausted, not to mention those who still thrive on them, will find the group of men who called themselves the Ritchie Boys good company. This documentary, named for a military boot camp in Maryland, tells of a group of Jewish immigrants who fled Germany for the United States in the years of the Nazi buildup.

When the war broke out, they realized that, with their language skills and knowledge of the enemy, they could help the American military. They were given intelligence and psychological warfare training in Maryland, then sent back to the continent they had fled to support the D-Day invasion by interrogating captured Germans soldiers and civilians for information useful to the Allies.

Mr. Bauer tracked down an engaging assortment of Ritchie Boys and, pacing his film beautifully, builds their testimony into an affecting group portrait.

Unlike many films about World War II, this one offers no dramatic or melodramatic arc of the sort that culminates in the taking of a vital bridge or completion of a decisive bombing run. Instead the viewer spends an hour and a half in the company of some old guys remembering their small but important contributions to the war.

Their anecdotes are sometimes harrowing, sometimes humorous, sometimes both, as when a Ritchie Boy named Si Lewen tells of driving around the war zone blaring messages to the locals over a loudspeaker. “We had a lot of casualties,” he deadpans. “All the Germans had to do was shoot toward the sound.”