Guy Stern, one of the last surviving members of an elite branch of the U.S. Army known as the “Ritchie Boys” died on Thursday, Dec. 7. He was 101 years old.
Stern joined the U.S. Army in 1943. The “Ritchie Boys” is a military unit made up of mostly German Jewish immigrants who had fled the Nazis and trained at Camp Ritchie in Maryland.
In 2021, Stern told Local 4 that the Ritchie Boys didn’t like being called heroes. They were soldiers doing their job. They had a war to fight and they did it.
Stern detailed some of what he experienced, including his escape from Nazi German in a memoir titled “Invisible Ink.” While Stern was able to escape, his parents, younger brother, and sister were forced from their home, deported, and later killed.
---> Ritchie Boys: The secret U.S. unit who helped the Allies beat Hitler
On Sept. 12, 1978, Stern joined Wayne State University as provost and vice president for academic affairs. He resigned 12 years later as the university’s chief academic and faculty officer and then accepted a position as a professor in the Department of Romance and Germanic Languages and Literature. He retired in 2003.
“He was so full of life and he kept your attention,” said Gina Horwitz, former WSU associate director of philanthropy and alumni relations, and friend of Stern and his wife, Susanna. “I had a group of friends come to The Zekelman Holocaust Center and he gave them a private tour of the Ritchie Boys exhibit, and he was 97 or 98 years old. But you would never know it. He had such a twinkle in his eye. You knew his history and what he went through, but you never, ever saw it on the outside. He was a walking legend. How many people can really say they know an American hero? I’m proud to say that my husband, Arthur, and I got to spent 12 years with an American hero.”
According to Wayne State, private services and a funeral with military honors were held last Friday in Holly, Michigan.
Wayne State said that instead of flowers, the family asks that contributions be made to the Guy Stern Endowment Fund in Exile and Holocaust Studies at Wayne State University. More information can be found at Today@Wayne.
The video below was first published on May 28, 2021: