Скачать или смотреть The Ritchie Boys — film discussion, June 30, 2024

The Ritchie Boys is a term used for American soldiers who trained at Camp Ritchie during World War II. At Camp Ritchie, military instructors taught intelligence gathering and analysis to approximately 20,000 soldiers. Several thousand of these soldiers were Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany who had immigrated to the United States and were then put in the position of interrogating Nazis captured by the Allies. This fascinating film-and-discussion program tells their story.

MEET THE PANEL

BERNIE LUBRAN is the President of the Friends of Camp Ritchie, a non-profit organization that seeks to educate the public on the achievements of the Ritchie Boys, a unique US Army unit that trained in top secrecy and made valuable contributions during WWII. Bernie’s late father was a Ritchie Boy who fled Nazi Germany in 1938. Like most Ritchie Boys, he rarely talked about his experiences, and Bernie has devoted the past 20 years to researching and telling their stories. Bernie holds a bachelor’s degree from Kent State University and an MBA from New York University in international economics. He had a career at the Export Import Bank and the Treasury Department in Washington, DC.

KATY SELF is the Director and Curator of the Ritchie History Museum. She worked at the McKissick Museum at the University of South Carolina from 2018-21. Her primary focus there was digitizing the university’s natural history collection. Since then, she has worked and volunteered with several small museums. She holds a master’s in museum studies and a post-baccalaureate certificate in digital curation from Johns Hopkins University. Her research focuses on smaller institutions’ management, best practices, and digitization processes. She began working at the Ritchie History Museum in September of 2023, and since then has thoroughly enjoyed learning about the deep history of Fort Ritchie.

MARK S. ZAID is a Washington, D.C. based national security attorney. He is repeatedly named a “Best Lawyer” in Washingtonian Magazine’s bi-annual designation for his national security or whistleblower work. In 2017, Mr. Zaid co-founded Whistleblower Aid, a non-profit law firm that provides pro bono legal representation to whistleblowers, particularly in the national security arena. He is the grandson of the late Rabbi David Max Eichhorn, who with U.S. forces liberated Dachau Concentration Camp, and he co-edited the book The GI’s Rabbi: World War Two Letters of Rabbi David Max Eichhorn (Univ. Press Kansas, 2004).