The Ritchie Boys Reviews (3 of 5)

New York Daily News

Published Tuesday, October 31, 2006 1:00 am
by Elizabeth Weitzman

Recollections from an unlikely group of World War II veterans

"There's a stink to war," warns one of the weary veterans interviewed in Christian Bauer's thoughtful Holocaust documentary. "No movie can re-create it."

Perhaps not, but at least there are films that do its untold stories justice.

The titular refugees, improbable soldiers trained at Maryland's Camp Ritchie, had one thing in common: They fled Nazi Germany for the U.S., and then returned to fight for their new country. Mostly Jewish, they started World War II as artists and intellectuals, and ended it as heroes. But they straddled a terrifying line: Americans didn't trust them, and Germans would happily kill them.

Still witty and eloquent, these cerebral boys became the haunted men who do their best to share their experiences with us, even as they know we'll never truly understand.