Guy Stern

He is one of the last surviving Ritchie Boys and turned 100 on January 14, 2022.

He was married to a teacher named Judith who died in 2003 and is now married to the German author Susanna Piontek.

Stern has received several awards throughout his life, among them the Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (1987) and the Goethe Medal (1989). He has also received an honorary doctorate from Hofstra University. He was named a Knight of the Legion of Honor by freeing France during the war and is recognized as an honorary citizen of Hildesheim. A plaque has been placed in front of the area that was once his home as tribute to his family.

Stern is currently the director of the Harry and Wanda Zekelman International Institute of the Righteous at the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills (near Detroit). He is one of the founders of the Lessing Society (University of Cincinnati, 1966), acting as its president from 1975 until 1977. As author and editor he published several books and compilations on German literary history, focusing mainly on literature on emigration and immigration. Some of these works include Essential German Grammar, War, Weimar, and Literature, and Literature and Culture in Exile. In 1998 he gave a lecture at the 60th anniversary of the Kristallnacht at the German parliament Bundestag in Bonn.

He moved back to New York City and went back to his studies, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in Romance languages in 1948 from Hofstra University, and then a Master of Arts in Germanistics in 1950 as well as a PhD in 1953 from Columbia University. After teaching at Columbia, he received an assistant professorship at Denison University in Ohio. He taught at the Seminarienhaus in Zürich in 1954 which was then owned by Ohio's Heidelberg University. He was later professor and head of the department for German language and literature at the University of Cincinnati in 1963. He was later head of the German and Slavic studies department at the University of Maryland, then until his retirement served as a distinguished professor of German literature and cultural history at Wayne State University and intermittently as senior vice president and provost. He was a visiting scholar at the German universities of Freiburg im Breisgau, Frankfurt am Main (1993), Leipzig (1997), Potsdam (1998) and Munich.

In 1942, Guy volunteered for naval intelligence, but was initially rejected because he was not born in the United States. He wanted to join the war effort in hopes of defeating the Nazis and reuniting with his family. He was later drafted in 1943, beginning weeks of basic training and legally changing his name from Gunther to Guy in case of capture by enemies. In 1944, he was sent to Camp Ritchie in Maryland, becoming a member of the Ritchie Boys, a special military intelligence unit composed of German, Austrian, and Czech refugees and immigrants to the United States, mostly of Jewish immigrants. There he studied enemy intelligence and different uniforms, memorized battle orders and aerial maps, and mostly learning how to conduct interrogations.

Once the war was over, Stern visited Hildesheim again where he learned that his family's home was taken by the Nazi government in 1938 and they were moved to a "Jew House". After talking to locals still in the area he learned they ended up at the Warsaw Ghetto and had perished there.

After witnessing the start of anti-Semitic policies under the Nazis, Guy's parents hatched a plan to send him to the United States to stay with his Uncle Benno and Aunt Ethel. His aunt and uncle had to ensure they had the finances to support him and that the affidavit would clear, meaning he would not become a public charge to the government. They did so by borrowing money from friends and returning it all after the record statements came through. To prepare for his trip, Guy's parents took him out of high school and hire an English tutor for him. With the help of an American-Jewish agency and a well-meaning consular official in Hamburg, Guy left Germany on November 5, 1937, and headed to St. Louis.

Guy Stern (born Günther Stern; January 14, 1922) is a German-American decorated member of the secret Ritchie Boys World War II military intelligence interrogation team. As the only person from his Jewish family to flee Nazi Germany, he came to the United States and later served in the US Army conducting frontline interrogations.

Gunther Stern was born on January 14, 1922, the son of Julius Stern and Hedwig Stern (née Silberberg). He and his family, including a younger brother, Werner, and a younger sister, Eleonore, resided in Hildesheim, Germany. His father owned his own business, working as a salesman of clothing materials. Guy had a love for literature and music at a young age and would enjoy going to the theater and opera with his parents on the weekends.